A 47-year-old Bayonne woman was busted this afternoon for allegedly stealing a gold-plated crucifix worth up to $15,000 from a Jersey City church, officials said.



Linda Keeber, swiped the ornate, gold-encrusted crucifix at the chapel in the parish convent at St. Paul's Church in Greenville after taking confession and receiving communion, police said.



"She should have made the confession after she left, not before," said the Rev. Thomas Thottungal before Keeber was nabbed this afternoon. "It's a terrible thing."



Keeber, a resident of Avenue E in Bayonne, was recognized by at least one person after she left the church and detectives located her at Cator Avenue and Old Bergen Road in Triangle Park and arrested her at around 4:30 p.m. this afternoon, police said.



Keeber told police she had hidden the crucifix in a storage closet where she lives, said Lt. Edgar Martinez.



And at 7 p.m. tonight, four police officers returned the cross to Thottungal at the South District precinct.

"I am so happy," the priest said. "We were praying for this."

Thottungal said the 2-foot-tall crucifix had adorned its marble niche above the gold tabernacle in the richly wood-paneled chapel for decades before being pinched after today's 7 a.m. mass.



Keeber walked into the convent and was heading through the doors into the residences when a cleaning woman told her the chapel was the other way, Thottungal said.



The pastor said he exited the sacristy just as Keeber was walking toward the chapel and she said "Father, could you please hear my confession, I haven't done it in a long time."



The pastor said he entered the chapel and he heard her sins.



After, Keeber received communion.



Finally, she asked if she could give a donation and Thottungal showed her envelopes at the chapel door, saying "Just leave it on the altar when you go." The pastor said she was kneeling in prayer when as he left.



But the cleaning woman said the next thing she saw was the suspect on the altar, wrapping something in her jacket, reports said.



The jacket and whatever was inside were tucked beneath the woman's arm as she walked to the door. The parish employee told her she should put her coat on, but the suspect said she had a ride waiting and left, reports said.



The cleaning woman returned to the chapel and saw the crucifix was gone, reports said, adding that she told police the woman was to blame. She told police the suspect regularly attends Mass at St. Paul's.



"(The crucifix) is the focal point there and you can see right away it is missing," the pastor said. "Everyone that came in at the 9 o'clock Mass saw it was missing."

