NORTH VERNON, Ind. -- A large safe stolen from a southern Indiana church has been recovered at the bottom of a nearby creek.

The Jennings County Sheriff's Department said burglars broke into St. Anne's Catholic Church near North Vernon last weekend and took a huge safe containing gold items valued at several thousand dollars.

"A 5-foot, 700-pound gun safe, which we use to hold all of our religious objects in, was gone," Father Jonathan Meyer told 6News' Jennifer Carmack. "To be stolen from God is beyond my comprehension."

He said the burglars dragged the safe through the sanctuary, using hay bales from a nativity scene to load it into a vehicle.

A few days after the heist, some of the gold artifacts showed up at a scrap dealer in nearby Austin, Ind., where they were sold for $14 a piece, and then resold for $70, police said.

"Some of the objects in the safe were over 150 years old. One-hundred-twenty-year-old names were just scratched off of them," Meyer said. "Other objects (you could see) where metal cutters cut them into pieces.

The church's safe was later found at the bottom of a Scott County Creek.

Investigators said they have three suspects in the case.

Meyer said as hard as it may be for parishioners, but the people responsible for the thefts should be forgiven.

"I hope to God that when and if they are found (we will be able) to meet with them in some sort of situation and let them know what they did was wrong," he said, "but to let them know God still loves them."