Bishop's Palace of Ghent

According to author and expert Kurt Impens, the Church, and more specifically the Diocese of Ghent, is involved with the disappearance of the Just Judges.

“In the early 1930s, the diocese of Ghent had raised a lot of savings from Catholic farmers in the region. However, all that money had gone up in smoke due to the economic crisis and reckless investments. In the Vatican archives, I literally found that the clergy in Ghent had to stop getting involved in financial matters.”

However, the Diocese of Ghent had a big problem. How could they at least partially repay that lost money to their faithful savers? Some key figures then came up with the plan to steal two panels of the Ghent Altarpiece and then demand a ransom of 1 million Belgian francs for their return. That amount would not be paid by the diocese, but by the government, which is after all the legal owner of the artwork by the Van Eyck brothers.

Mediahuis België