Pope Francis returns the Vatican’s Parthenon Marbles to Greece
Pope Francis has decreed that the Vatican Museum will return their three Parthenon Marbles to their rightful home in Greece. Interestingly, in the statement explaining the Marbles return, the Vatican referred to the repatriation as a “donation” to Ieronymous II, the Orthodox Archbishop of Athens and head of the Greek Orthodox Church.
According to AP, Vatican officials said that the donation to Ieronymous II was aligned with “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth”. However, the return of the artefacts has not yet occurred and is expected to take some time to actually complete.
The Vatican proposal is also said to have increased pressure on the British Museum, which has rejected multiple repatriation requests from Greece. Over the years, they have turned down several requests to return their extensive collection of Parthenon Marbles, which have been a critical allure to the museum since 1816.
The sculptures, which can be traced back to the 5th Century B.C., are primarily comprised of remnants of a frieze that surrounded the walls of the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis in Athens. They had been made in honour of the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena.
However, most of the frieze’s sculptures were lost by Greece in the 17th Century, and many others were taken in the 1880s by Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin. Several Parthenon Marble fragments were dispersed across Europe, but many countries have recently decided to return them to Greece.
The Vatican had owned three fragments, including a horse’s head, a boy’s head and a bearded man’s head. The boy’s head had been loaned back to Greece in 2008 for just one year, but it looks like it will be making the permanent journey home soon.
The Cultural Ministry of Greece welcomed Pope Francis’ donation and said that it would aid their efforts to repatriate the remaining fragments and “their reunification with those on display in the Acropolis Museum.”
