Pope Francis delivers the Angelus prayer from his window on the day of the release of his new encyclical, titled “Fratelli Tutti” (Brothers All), at St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, October 4, 2020.
The request to allow the texts to be exhibited in Mexico was made in a two-page letter addressed to Pope Francis and posted on President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s Twitter page on Saturday (Oct 10) but dated Oct 2.
It was delivered to the pope by Lopez Obrador’s wife, Beatriz Gutierrez Muller, who met with him at the Vatican following a meeting she had on Friday with Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
One of the three codices, or books, requested is the Codex Borgia, an especially colourful screen-fold book spread across dozens of pages that depicts gods and rituals from ancient central Mexico.
It is one of the best-preserved examples of pre-conquest Aztec-style writing that exists, after Catholic authorities in colonial-era Mexico dismissed such codices as the work of the devil and ordered hundreds or even thousands of them burned in the decades following the 1521 conquest.
In the letter, Lopez Obrador requests the Vatican return the Codex Borgia, two other ancient codices as well as its maps of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan for a one-year loan in 2021.
The nationalist president is planning a series of events to commemorate the anniversary next year. He also reiterated his request that the Catholic Church, as well as reigning Spanish King Philip VI, apologise for atrocities that were committed following the conquest of Mexico, which Lopez Obrador said would mark an “act of historic contrition”.
The Vatican has not yet responded to the request, but its museums and archives have in the past lent out various manuscripts and works of art after similar requests from other countries.
