A saintly statue showing the baby Jesus with his grandmother and mum has been miraculously returned to a church more than 50 years after it was stolen.
The 15th-century masterpiece shows Jesus with his mother Mary and her mother St Anne as a holy family group.
It went missing when thieves broke into a church in Wiesensteig, in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, in 1973 and was believed to be lost forever.
But, reports local media, it has been restored to astonished church leaders after a sharp-eyed Renaissance art expert spotted the statue in a Swiss auction catalogue.
Once he’d tipped off the police the statue was seized and once its true ownership had been established returned to its rightful owners.

It later emerged that the elderly sellers had innocently bought the statue from an antique dealer in the 1970s and were selling off some of their collection ahead of retirement.
The statue, titled ‘Anne Selbdritt’ was created from lime wood by medieval master carver Hans Multscher who lived from 1400 to 1467.
‘Selbdritt’ means ‘we three’ in period Middle High German.
Baden-Wurttemberg State Criminal Police Office said: “When the owners were informed about the circumstances of the criminal charge of possession of Anna, they spontaneously agreed to return the sculpture.”
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