Pope Francis has decided to send back to Greece the three fragments of Parthenon Marbles that the Vatican Museum held for centuries, the Vatican announced on Friday.
The Vatican termed the gesture a "donation" from the Pope to His Beatitude Ieronymos II the Orthodox Christian Archibishop of Athens and all Greece "as a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow the ecumenical path of truth."
The Vatican thus becomes the first State to return its fragments of the Parthenon Marbles, leaving the British Museum among the holders.
But the Vatican suggested that the Holy See wanted to make it clear that it did not want a bilateral decision to return the Marbles from the Vatican State to Greece, but rather a religiously inspired donation.
The statement may have been thus worded in order not to create a precedent that could affect other priceless holdings in the Vatican Museums Associated Press reports.
No comments:
Post a Comment