Vatican’s secret, and deadly, project to preserve its saints
By Theresa Potenza of The New York Post
In 1975, Monsignor Gianfranco Nolli, the director of the Vatican’s Egyptian Museum, had an inspiration. After examining the excellent state of 4,000-year-old Egyptian mummies, he believed the Church could advance their treatments of popes and saints for the same effect.
The Vatican put together a team of researchers, which worked to update and improve the mummification process. Medical surgeons, pathologists, radiologists, anthropologists and microbiologists came up with a conservation treatment and began treating the newly deceased to bodies and body parts dating back as far as the 3rd century.