Amazon statues stolen from Rome church

Early Oct 21 morning, unidentified individuals entered the Church of St Mary in Traspontina, near the Vatican, removed a group of statuettes from a si

Oct 26, 2019

VATICAN: Early Oct 21 morning, unidentified individuals entered the Church of St Mary in Traspontina, near the Vatican, removed a group of statuettes from a side chapel, and threw them in the Tiber River, posting a video of the action on social media.

The statuettes, which depict pregnant indigenous women, were used in a 4 October ceremony in the Vatican at the beginning of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon Region.

Dr Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, responded to a journalist's question at the Holy See Press Office Synod briefing: "We have already repeated several times here that those statues represented life, fertility, mother earth. It was a gesture - I believe - that contradicts the spirit of dialogue that should always inspire us. I don't know what else to say except that it was a theft, and perhaps that speaks for itself."

Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh tweeted: "Just prayed here at Transpontina church at altar where, in an act of appalling disrespect & violence, fanatics egged on by ethics-free journalism this am broke in here & threw into the Tiber the figurine described by the Catholic people of Amazonia as Our Lady of the Amazon."

Christopher Lamb, The Tablet Rome Correspondent and Consultant to BBC Two's 'Inside the Vatican' documentary, tweeted: "An act of iconoclasm, and a further attack on the indigenous of the Amazon, who are already persecuted.

"This takes place amid a climate of hostility to indigenous icons generated in some Church quarters during the Amazon synod."

Some conservative news sites have praised the persons who carried out the theft, because, they claim, the statues depict a 'pagan' goddess.

On the first day of the Synod an effigy of 15 year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg was hung from a highway overpass in Rome with a sign round its neck reading "Greta is your God."--ICN