A serial burglar broke into part of Minster Abbey within hours of being released early from jail.

Stephen Collins smashed into a guesthouse and broke the Seventh Commandment by stealing the church’s petty cash.

Now the 50-year-old has been jailed for two years after being told by a judge it had been “a particularly mean theft”.

Prosecutor Paul Valder told Canterbury Crown Court the raid on the nine-bedroom guesthouse was spotted by Sister Benedict on the morning of April 19.

She discovered fragments of glass in one of the four bathrooms and £10 missing from a petty-cash box.

Mr Valder said Collins, of Shaftesbury Street, Ramsgate, was arrested after his DNA was discovered in blood traces left after he had smashed the window with a piece of flint.

Mr Valder said the nun was aware that Collins had entered the same building, in the same way, previously.

Kerry Waitt, defending, said Collins had just been released from a prison sentence and had made his way to Thanet.

“He was in need of money and decided to return to the Abbey where he had received help in the past.”

After his arrest he was returned to prison for breaching his prison licence and was due to be released on Wednesday, June 1.

But Judge Adele Williams told him it was a particularly mean offence to steal from a place where he had previously received help and sentenced him to two more years.

A previous court hearing was told Collins had also broken into a religious building where he had received help in the past and stole from the occupant of the presbytery at the Church of Our Lady and St Benedict, in Birchington.

Again, his lawyer told the judge that he had just been released from prison with £46 and nowhere to live, so he broke into the presbytery. He was given a four-year sentence in 2014.