One Year Later, “Beast Jesus” Is Still Transforming Lives

Via The Week, a happy ending to last August’s tale of 81-year-old Cecilia Gimenez and her spectacular amateur restoration of a 19th-century fresco — “originally named Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) but now widely known as Ecce Mono (Behold the Monkey)” — in her small church in Borja, Spain. A few details from the miniature economic boom:

40,000
Visitors who have shown up in Borja to behold Gimenez’s handiwork for themselves.

5,000
Population of Borja.

$1.30
The entry fee to see the fresco. The money goes to the town’s Sancti Spiritus charity.

$66,285
Amount the fees and other donations from tourists have provided to the church’s charity.

60
Elderly Borja residents living at a care home that is receiving money raised by the church.

Best of all: “5,000 signatures on a petition at Change.org last year calling for Gimenez’s version to be preserved, rather than having professional restorers try to salvage the original fresco. The petition said Gimenez’s version “reveals a subtle criticism of the Church’s creationist theories while questioning a resurgence of new idols.”