The Vatican Sends Valuable Piece of Art to Havana

HAVANA TIMES, Jan 27 — The Vatican Museum has brought to Havana a lectern or missal which belonged to the chaplain of Christopher Columbus. The item constitutes the oldest example of indigenous Christian art in the New World, reports Granma newspaper today.

The piece will be put on an exceptional one-year-long exhibit in the temporary display hall of the Havana City Museum at the request of the city historian of Havana, Eusebio Leal Spengler.

The stand consists of a wood carving in the shape of a shell with thin strips of fish bone and tortoise shell embedded in its surface. It remained in Cuba during the evangelization of tribes here in the Caribbean.