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.

Middle school teacher arrested in alleged prostitution scheme at casino hotel

Stranded hikers cling to steep California mountain ridge as helicopter crew swoops in

Longtime Serbian leader Vucic’s defeat at the hands of student movement leaves Washington in awkward position

Watch: El-Sayed Staffer Lets His True Feelings About Americans and the Muslim Brotherhood Slip in Devastating Undercover Video

DHS suspends visa-free travel program for Chinese nationals amid birth tourism, security concerns

Germans Furious After Audi CEO Teams with Trump to Announce New Georgia Plant

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to why removing Ilhan Omar from Congress could be harder than Trump expects

Billionaire with Epstein ties emerges as top Dem donor bankrolling ads weaponizing disgraced financier’s files

Utterly Incompetent WNBA Faces Potential Championship Game Disaster – Was it Because DEI Staff Failed to Book Stadium?

Powerful: Video Shows Grieving Mom Offer Illegal Alien Trucker Forgiveness Over Son’s Death: ‘I Pray for You’

Have You Seen Him? Police Search for Murderer Who Escaped Tennessee Prison

Breaking: Comey Charged for Reportedly Leaking National Security Secrets in 2016

Not even sky high gas prices or the Iran war will stop Trump supporters voting MAGA

James Comey charged with leaking national defense information

DOJ seeks to prosecute Comey over alleged national defense disclosure

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?”