Vatican Nativity scene ridiculed for ‘embarrassing’ futuristic figures

“It is not what we expected, and not what most of us want,” started a Catholic Herald opinion article headlined, “The Vatican’s Embarrassing SciFi Creche.” “This year’s Vatican creche has been laughed at and ridiculed for looking like a science fiction story or children’s toys.”

This installment took 10 years to create, according to Vatican News, and was completed in 1975. The set comprises 52 different pieces, including life-size ceramic statues.

The pope praised the work in his Friday address, calling the set a sign from God “in the midst of the suffering of the pandemic.”

“Never as in this year have they been a sign of hope for Romans and for the pilgrims who are able to come to admire them,” he said.

Twitter users quickly commented on the set. Catholic Herald contributor Tim Stanley called the scene “absolutely terrifying.”

Others criticized the unusual display for lacking the comfort of a “familiar and traditional” set.

“At a time when people around the world have anxiety over the future … it would have been comforting to see a Nativity scene which is familiar and traditional,” conservative commentator Tanya Granic Allen tweeted. “But they went with this.”

Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo called it “worse than advertised.”

“Is that Baby Yoda emerging from the Fisher-Price space man figurine?” he asked.

Others, however, were more receptive.

This year’s scene is not the first nontraditional set to grace the Vatican’s plaza. In 2018, sculptors created a 5-meter-tall sculpture out of more than 700 tons of sand that covered 25 square meters — though without any spacemen.