The Catholic major Basilica of St. Peter’s is not a museum for pagan statues, and it would be wrong to use it for this purpose.
Besides that, putting such statuettes in a Catholic Church during a Pontifical High Mass (October 7), while members of tribes who believe in this false goddess, are present in Rome, is not treating these statuettes as museum pieces.
Such an act objectively expresses, if not worship, at least solidarity with false gods, putting a false religion that is a horror in God’s eyes, as we know from many passages of the Old Testament, side by side with Catholic religion.
Even if there is no subjective idolatrous intention behind this, as Pope Francis affirms, the objective fact of putting idols in a Church, let alone in St Peter's, is an offence against God and an objectively sacrilegious act.
Cardinal Müller expressed it well: not the removal of the pagan statues from the church was the unjust action for which one ought to apologize. This was only against human law, …More