The Vatican Museums returned three pieces of the 2,500-year-old Parthenon 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 ancient temple sculptures that are held by the kingdom. United.
The fragments had been in the papal collections of the Vatican Museums for more than a century and Pope Francis ordered their return last December.
The pope gave 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 in the Vatican Museums, Reverend Papamikroulis Emmanouil, described the pope’s gesture as “historic”.
Emmanouil stated that “much remains to be healed of the wounds and traumas suffered by this monument (the Parthenon) due to practices that belong to the distant past”.
“The hope is…that the Holy Father’s gesture will be imitated by others. His Holiness, the Pope of Rome, has shown 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, Cardinal Fernando Vergez, governor of Vatican City, said the three pieces were acquired by the papacy “correctly” in the early 19th century, without elaborating.
With the donation to Greece, the Vatican Museums no longer own any part of the Parthenon.
Source: Terra
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