he ever signed. Vasari also reports the anecdote that Michelangelo later regretted his outburst of pride and swore never to sign another work of his hands. Fifty years later, Vasari declared the following regarding the Pieta: In 1964, the Pietà was lent by the Vatican to the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair to be installed in the Vatican pavilion. The former Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman formally requested the statue from Pope John XXIII, appointed Edward M. Kinney, Director of Purchasing and Shipping of Catholic Relief Services – USCC, to head up the Vatican Transport Teams. The statue was shipped in a wooden crate thick with an base, secured to the deck of the liner Cristoforo Colombo; in case of an accident, the crate contained cushioning so thick that it would float in water, and had an emergency locator beacon as well as a marker buoy attached. At the fair, people stood in line for hours to catch a glimpse from a conveyor belt moving past the sculpture. It was returned to the Vatican afterwards. Restoration (1736) Subsequent to its carving the Pietà sustained much damage. Four fingers on Mary's left hand, broken during a move, were professionally restored in 1736 by the Roman sculptor Giuseppe Lirioni (1690—1746). Modern scholars today are divided as to whether the restorer took artistic liberties to make the hand gestures more "rhetorical". Vandalism (1972) The most substantial damage occurred on 21 May 1972 (Pentecost Sunday), when a mentally disturbed geologist, the Hungarian-born Australian Laszlo Toth, walked into the chapel and attacked the sculpture with a geologist's hammer while shouting, "I am Jesus Christ; I have risen from the dead!" With 15 blows he removed Mary's arm at the elbow, knocked off a chunk of her nose, and chipped one of her eyelids. An American national, Bob Cassilly from Saint Louis, Missouri was one of the first people to remove Toth from the Pietà. He recalled the following events: Onlookers took many of the pieces of marble that flew off. Later, some pieces were returned, but many were not, including Mary's nose, which had to be reconstructed from a block cut out of her back. After the attack, the work was painstakingly restored and returned to its place within the basilica, just to the right of the entrance, between the holy door and the altar of Saint Sebastian, and is now protected by