Is there a crate of marble appendages in the Vatican’s cellars?

Before either the ailing Pope or your columnist dies, it seems timely to return to a lifelong interest of mine.

A detailed sculture depicting a scene of carnage in Rome on display at the Vatican –with offending appendages removed. Picture: istock

Cardinal George Pell was no fan of Pope Francis, seeing him as fallible on matters of faith and science. Unlike George, Francis accepted the reality of climate change. And on a variety of theological issues the two might have belonged to different religions, if not centuries. George saw the Holy Father as “woke”, and far too tolerant on issues regarding sex.

This being the case, and before either the ailing Pope or your columnist dies, it seems timely to return to my lifelong interest in the Vatican’s incomparable collection of marble penises. Decades ago my personal inspections revealed that the Vatican’s naked Roman statues had been attacked with hammers in order to remove the offending appendages. Not by an insane outsider like Australia’s Laszlo Toth, who in 1972 badly damaged Michelangelo’s Pieta. We’re talking an inside job, on papal authority. As I disclosed to my dear readers at the time, only a single marble dick survived the culling: I found it, the size of a jellybean, on a cherub. The wounds on all the other statues were covered by ill-fitting plaster fig-leaves.

Statue of Hermes at the Vatican.

I assumed the off-cuts survived in the Vatican’s storage facilities, a fact later confirmed in correspondence with a professor in Milan. And, frankly, I saw an opportunity to make a quick lira. It was the time of the Pet Rock craze and I could see a market for marble genitals, perhaps as executive paperweights, so I wrote immediately to Rome. No response. The Church would neither confirm nor deny.

So I wrote again. And again. Popes came and went but as far as my stone paperweights were concerned, a stony silence. But surely things will be different now? Under new management at Head Office?

Pope Francis arrives to lead his weekly general audience in St Peter's Square. Picture: AFP

And now I’m not seeking to make a quick lira. (Oops! Euro.) I’d simply like Francis to have those pitiful plaster fig-leaves removed and the genitalia re-attached to the groins. It would be a solemn variation of pin the tail on the donkey – pin the donk on the Ancient Roman. After all, the Vatican repaired the Pieta after Laszlo‘s vandalism in 1972. Now, in 2024, it’s time to get out the Tarzan’s Grip.

If the Vatican officials can’t locate the dicks, I have the contacts for that Milanese professor who professes to have seen them in the cellar at St Peter’s Basilica. Or was it the catacombs? Either way, we’re talking a sizeable crate.

With no Pell around to point the finger, here’s a chance for Francis to point the percies. For him to echo Francis Sinatra and do it his way. I seek nothing for myself, although a Papal knighthood might be nice.

I see this as the culmination of a long career as an amateur archaeologist and collector of antiquities. That’s what took me to the Vatican in the first place – a wish to compare its collection of nuddy Romans with my own. Little knowing I would discover the mutilations and the (plaster) cover-ups.

And it’s far from my only archaeological triumph. I also found that Ancient Egyptians heading for South America with their pyramid scheme were blown ashore at Port Melbourne and, on finding a river that evoked their mighty Nile, shouted “Yea Ra!”. Hence the Yarra.

And, yes, I discovered that Easter Island was covered with giant effigies of Malcolm Fraser.