Pope Francis Asks for Forgiveness After Amazon Statues Stolen, Thrown Into River in Rome

Pope Francis asked Amazonian bishops and tribal leaders for forgiveness Friday after indigenous statues were stolen from a Vatican-area church and thrown into a nearby river.

The wood-carved figures of naked pregnant women, known as Pachamama, were brought to the Vatican to be displayed during the pope’s three-week assembly of Amazonian clergy, called a synod.

The pope insisted there was no intention of idolatry, which undercut conservative claims that the statues are symbols of pagan worship.

“Above all, this happened in Rome and as the bishop of this diocese I ask forgiveness of the people who were offended by this gesture,” Francis told the synod hall.

The Vatican has said the statues are symbols of life, fertility and Mother Earth.

Man dead, another critical after double stabbing at Brooklyn park as police detain person of interest: NYPD

Trump scores another endorsement win with Louisiana Senate runoff victory

Louisiana Democrats pick rural farmer to challenge GOP in uphill Senate bid

Ketanji Brown Jackson Really Worried Judges Might Actually Apply Second Amendment In Gun Cases

Taxpayer Dollars May Have Funded Education Of CCP Assets, Report Reveals

Parents of 7-year-old who died weighing 255 pounds charged with murder in suspected neglect case

Red States Unite Against California Over It’s Alleged Plot To Impose Green Agenda On Nation

New York Might Make Mamdani’s City-Owned Grocery Stores Permanent

NY AG hopeful blasts Letitia James as Medicaid fraud recoveries collapse: ‘She’s not doing the job’

Trump nominates Oklahoma law enforcement veteran Lance Schroyer to lead ICE as permanent director

Two 14-year-olds flee MTA officers, remain missing after vanishing from New Jersey train station

Judge rules Dan Sullivan can appear on Alaska primary ballot against Sen. Dan Sullivan

Jeffries welcomes Democratic Socialists into the fold as critics warn party is revealing ‘exactly who it is’

Polygamous sect leader convicted of abuse charges after girls found in trailer on Arizona highway

Hezbollah rejects Israel and Lebanon’s peace framework: ‘Null and void’

The wooden figures were found unharmed in the Tiber River this week. The pope said he would consider having them displayed during the final Mass of the synod on Sunday.

The theft was caught on surveillance video Monday as thieves took the figures from the Santa Maria in Traspontina church, just down the block from St. Peter’s Square.

The video appeared to show at least two men enter the church before dawn, take the statues placed at an altar and then throw them in the river. The act was celebrated by conservative Catholics who deemed the statues pagan idols.

Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the conservative German fired by Francis in 2017 as the Vatican’s doctrine chief, said it was a “great mistake” to bring the statues to the Vatican in the first place.

“To throw it out can be against human law, but to bring the idols into the church was a grave sin, a crime against divine law,” he told conservative U.S. Catholic broadcaster EWTN.

While the theft was cheered by conservative Catholics, progressives denounced the act as racism.

“Can you imagine the conservative outcry if someone tossed the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa into the Tiber?” the National Catholic Reporter, a progressive Catholic magazine, said in an editorial this week. “We do not use the term ‘racists’ lightly, but what else is it?”