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Vatican lends Parthenon Marbles fragment to Greece

The Vatican returned a small fragment of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece on Wednesday on a one-year loan, fuelling calls for the British Museum to hand back its own priceless sculptures from the ancient temple.

The loan of the fragment, one of three in the Vatican Museum's vast collection of antiquities, follows a request for its return by Greece's late Orthodox Archbishop Christopoulos at a meeting with Pope Benedict in 2006.

In recent years Greece has stepped up its campaign to recover large sections of the frieze removed from the Parthenon in 1801 by Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin and British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire.
Read entire article at Reuters