Imagine, you wake up on Sunday morning, stir the kids, shower and put on your Sunday best. After breakfast everyone piles into the car and off you go to church. Your eldest bemoans having to go to Mass and you're secretly worried your little one is going to create havoc running up and down the aisle so you pre-plan putting her straight into the children's room. When you get there however, all that remains are the foundations, the whole building has gone and you are left wondering if your auto-pilot has malfunctioned and you've taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way. "I'm sure the church was here, have I taken a wrong turn dear?" You recognise many of the bemused faces in the parking lot as the parishioners you've seen every Sunday and then it dawns on you. Someone has nicked the church.

For the villagers of Komarovo, a village 186 miles north-east of Moscow, this scenario is a stark reality. Local prosecutors where informed by members of the Russia Orthodox Church that the 200-year-old church in a rural location near Komarovo has all but disappeared. All that remains of the two-story building are the foundations and some sections of wall, the church said. It's not uncommon in rural Russia for thieves to target churches. Religious icons can be sold and building materials from church structures can be sold on the black market but I wonder if this is the first time an entire church has disappeared.

My own church was built at a time when the locals where starving, one generation on from the potato famine, perhaps as this economic recession and property bubble that has hammered the Irish economy bites, we will tear down our own church in order to feed our people.