Halfway Through Synod: Vatikan Fakes Ignorance About Pachamama Statue

The wooden Pachamama statue, omnipresent at the Amazon synod, is “just a female statue representing life,” Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican Prefect of the Dicastery for Communications, tried to fool the public during the October 16 Synod press conference.

Ruffini promised "to get information" about the artist and the meaning of the topless idol looking exactly like any other statue of the Andean goddess Pachamama (pictured right).

As a "personal opinion," Ruffini said that “looking for pagan symbols in the statue is seeing evil where there is no evil.” Implicitly accusing the Vatican of ambiguity, he suggested that “some things in history have many interpretations.”

Father Giacomo Costa SJ claimed that he never saw the statue, but nevertheless interpreted it as an “indigenous woman who brings life and represents life”. The figure is “neither sacred nor pagan," he insisted.

But how do Ruffini and Costa explain the fact that the statue was adored with prostrations, honoured in St Peter’s with hymns, and carried in a procession to the Synod hall on the shoulders of "bishops" (video below)?

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