The Vatican Museum returned three 2,500-year-old Parthenon pieces to Greece on Tuesday and the Greek government said the gesture should be imitated by other countries, in a likely reference to a collection of sculptures from the ancient temple maintained by the Vatican. UK.
The fragments had been in the Vatican Museum’s papal collections for more than a century, and Pope Francis ordered their return last December.
The pope donated them to Ieronymos II, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, as a gesture of ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.
Ieronymos’ representative at Tuesday’s signing ceremony at the Vatican Museums, Reverend Papamikroulis Emmanouil, called the pope’s gesture “historic”.
Emmanouil said that “a lot remains to heal the wounds and traumas suffered by this monument (the Parthenon) because of practices that belong to a distant past”.
“The hope is that the Holy Father’s gesture will be imitated by others. His Holiness, the Pope of Rome, has proved that this is possible and realistic,” he said.
The Parthenon, which stands on the Acropolis of Athens, was completed in the 5th century BC as a temple to the goddess Athena, and its decorative friezes contain some of the greatest examples of ancient Greek sculpture.
In his speech at the signing ceremony, Vatican City Governor Cardinal Fernando Vergez said the three pieces were acquired by the papacy “properly” in the early 19th century. He didn’t go into detail.
With the donation to Greece, the Vatican Museum no longer owns any part of the Parthenon.
Source: CNN Brasil
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