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The Catholic Church’s contributions to Western art can never be underestimated. Now, I can see how some people who don’t travel widely from the US might be shocked at these photos. But you can see these kind of artifacts from Mexico clear to Italy (and probably beyond).

I'm well-travelled, have a fine arts degree and find the long-standing fascination with human remains in the Roman Catholic Church to be disturbing, whether it's a finger bone "relic" or these wildly exuberant, bejewelled corpses. Most of humanity finds human remains disturbing in any context, you do realize this, don't you?

Leave the dead alone. Don't parade their remains around in bits and pieces, don't put them in a display case to be ogled, don't tart them up with gold leaf, doodads and cut glass tchotchkes. It's distinctly pre-Christian, to put it charitably. Less charitably, it comes across as the work of a superstitious, backward people.

Are you familiar at all with other non-Christian cultures that have practiced making "art" out of human remains? It's invariably occultic, with some form of magic or power attributed to the various objects deemed worthy of such aesthetic effort.

I suggest removing items of value from these dead bodies, sell or display such items if you must, but put the remains back where they belong, in the grave, and do not desecrate these graves again.

Leave them be.