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You know, ordinarily, I'd say that no object is worth human life. No matter how much an artifact is worth, a human life is worth more. This is because of one thing and one thing only. And that's potential. Every human has the potential to achieve far greater things than ever seen before. The potential to make a truck load of money and the potential to change the world. No one knows exactly what the next person can do so that's why human life is always and will always be worth more than any object.
But taking into consideration the situation you just described, I don't think those people would have run into the church if it meant certain death for them. Those objects weren't retrieved because of their worth. They were retrieved because of their sentimental value. That's something that people don't really understand anymore. Something might not mean much but it might mean a lot to someone. So when those people ran in to save those objects and artifacts, they didn't run in to die, neither did they do it because of how much it might be worth. They did it because they believed those objects were special to them and to the church and they believed they would make it out alive.