Vatican detains ex-employee who ‘tried to sell back altar canopy manuscript’

Scaffolding surrounding the canopy by Giovan Lorenzo Bernini surmounting the papal Altar of the Confession in St Peter’s Basilica (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)

Vatican police have detained a former employee who allegedly tried to sell a 17th-century gilded manuscript describing Bernini’s designs for the altar canopy of St Peter’s Basilica back to the Holy See.

Vatican prosecutors said the 18-page manuscript, which apparently contains the first known specifications for the gilding of the baldacchino canopy, had disappeared from the basilica archives.