Newborn Baby Boy Found Dead Inside Box Left for Abandoned Babies at Church: Reports

01/03/2025 05:34 AM

The baby was discovered at the San Giovanni Battista Church in Bari, Italy, on Jan. 2, according to local media

A newborn has been found dead inside a "thermal cradle" left for abandoned babies at a church in Italy, according to reports.

On the morning of Thursday, Jan. 2, the baby boy's lifeless body was discovered at the San Giovanni Battista Church in Bari in the Puglia region, per Italian news agency Ansa.

It's thought the person who left the baby didn't close the door to the room where the cradle was located, meaning the alarm wasn't triggered like it was meant to to let parish priest, Father Antonio Ruccia, know he was there, per the news agency.

Ruccia told Ansa he was in Rome "but my cell phone, which is connected to the cradle, did not ring."

"Maybe he could have been saved, but we must forgive," the priest said, per local outlet La Repubblica. The Italian newspaper and CNN reported the boy was around one month old.

Ruccia did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

The newborn was reportedly found by a local funeral home director who was passing the baby box door, which is located on the outside of the church for privacy purposes, per CNN. He was said to have spotted it hadn't been closed properly.

An investigation is underway and Bari police have said it's unclear if the baby was already dead before being taken to the church, per Ansa.

An autopsy will now be carried out on the baby to determine how and when he died, a police spokesperson told CNN.

Bari police did not immediately respond when contacted by PEOPLE.

The church's baby box was said to have been successfully used in two cases prior to this one; once on July 19, 2020 and again on Dec. 23, 2023, per La Repubblica.

The cradle was added at the church after a dead baby was discovered on a beach in the nearby town of Monopoli in 2015, Ansa reported.

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Baby boxes were introduced in Italy in 2006 to "allow mothers to abandon their newborn babies with no questions asked," according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website.

"The boxes are the high tech, modern equivalent of the old medieval foundling wheels operated by orphanages in Padua from the 1400s until 1888," the NIH website reads.

"The wheels were a circular wooden board half inside and half outside the orphanages run by nuns. Mothers placed their unwanted newborns on the board and rang a bell, and the nuns would spin the board to find the child," it adds.