The face of an angel that was restored to resemble one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Europe has been scrubbed off a fresco at a church in Rome after both the Vatican and the Roman diocese headed by Pope Leo XIV ordered its removal.
An Italian newspaper sparked an uproar over the weekend when it noticed that a newly restored fresco at the Basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina in downtown Rome suddenly featured an angel that looked suspiciously like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party.
The parish priest originally defended the artist’s work, but after technicians from the Roman diocese told him the premier’s face needed to go, the 49-year-old Meloni’s likeness was removed Tuesday night from the fresco.
There’s now a blank space where the face used to be.
“I erased it last night,” the artist Bruno Valentinetti, told Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper. “I don’t care. I keep saying it wasn’t the prime minister, but the Curia wanted it that way, and I erased it.”
A few minutes later, he seemed to retract his statement.
“Okay, it was Meloni, but along the lines of the painting that was there before,” he said.
Valentinetti himself painted the original fresco in 2000, when Meloni was a local politician in Rome and youth leader of the post-fascist National Alliance Party, in the 13th century basilica, in a chapel dedicated to “holy souls.” He was later asked to restore it to fix water damage.
Archivists are now looking for documentation of the original fresco, which doesn’t fall under any heritage protection laws, making it easier to alter, Reuters reported.
Both the Roman diocese and the Italian Ministry of Culture have vowed to investigate the matter.
“I always said that if it was divisive, we would remove it,” parish priest Daniele Micheletti told the Italian news agency Ansa. “There was a procession of people coming to see it, not to listen to Mass or pray. It wasn’t tenable.”
So far, the Vatican has declined to comment.
The Roman diocese’s cardinal vicar, Leo’s close ally Baldassare Reina, issued a “firm” statement that “images of sacred art and the Christian tradition can be misused or exploited, as they are intended exclusively to support liturgical life.”
As pope, Leo is also the bishop of Rome.
The 70-year-old Chicago native has been an outspoken critic of many of Trump’s policies, including the president’s hardline immigration tactics and his foreign policy.
He shared some of those disagreements with the administration directly during a May sit-down with Vice President JD Vance, and has made a point of distancing himself from his older brother’s pro-MAGA politics.
In November, a White House spokesperson slammed Leo for saying that detained migrants should be allowed to receive communion.
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