If you want to clean more-than-century-old marble statues of the apostles, you don’t simply use soap and water.
Rather, you must spray the figures with a “specialized conservation material” that subsequently dries into a “latex-like layer,” which is then “carefully peeled away,” thus preserving the statue’s original finish.
The process “is labor intensive and takes significant time,” according to staff at the Basilica of Saint Mary, a towering and historic minor basilica in downtown Minneapolis.
The massive church, which was dedicated in 1915 and became the first basilica in the United States when it was designated as such by Pope Pius XI in 1926, has been undergoing a major restoration project since 2025.
Built in the Beaux-Arts style — what was at the time a popular architectural form in the United States — the co-cathedral boasts a towering flèche-topped central dome and an 82-foot-high barrel vault.
Among its many adornments include the statues of the apostles, which were carved in Italy as half-scale replicas
