List of cardinal-priests from Santa Maria sopra Minerva 1557–1566 Michele Ghisleri (later Pope Pius V) 1566–1589 Michele Bonelli 1589–1602 Girolamo Bernerio 1602–1608 François-Marie Thaurusi 1608–1616 Filippo Spinelli 1621–1639 Giulio Roma 1643–1654 Giambattista Altieri 1655–1679 Jean François Paul de Gondi 1679–1694 Philip Howard of Norfolk 1694–1699 José Saenz d'Aguirre 1701–1729 Louis Antoine de Noailles 1729–1730 Agustín Pipia 1730–1747 Philipp Ludwig von Sinzendorf 1747–1762 Daniele Delfino 1758–1770 Giuseppe Pozzobonelli 1770–1782 Scipione Borghese 1783–1787 Tommaso Maria Ghilini 1787–1800 Vincenzo Ranuzzi 1801–1814 Giulio Maria della Somaglia 1816–1822 Francesco Fontana 1823–1828 Francesco Bertazzoli 1829–1832 Benedetto Barberini 1832–1836 Giuseppe Maria Velzi 1838–1850 Antonio Francesco Orioli 1850–1854 Raffaele Fornari 1857–1860 Francesco Gaude 1861–1864 Gaetano Bedini 1868–1870 Matteo Eustachio Gonella 1875–1885 John McCloskey 1887–1894 Zeferino González y Díaz Tuñón 1895–1896 Egidio Mauri 1896–1909 Serafino Cretoni 1911–1918 John Murphy Farley 1919–1922 Teodoro Valfre di Bonzo 1922–1926 Stanislas Touchet 1926–1929 Giuseppe Gamba 1930–1938 Giulio Serafini 1939–1946 Eugène Tisserant 1946–1965 Clemente Micara 1967–1974 Antonio Samorè 1976–1977 Dino Staffa 1979–1998 Anastasio Ballestrero 2001–2017 Cormac Murphy-O'Connor 2018–present António Marto Other churches with this name In Assisi, another church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva was built in the 16th century within the surviving cella of a late Republican temple of Minerva. Its Corinthian portico still stands. Minerva's Pulcino In front of the church there is one of the most curious monuments of Rome, the so-called Pulcino della Minerva. It is a statue designed by the Baroque era sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (and executed by his pupil Ercole Ferrata in 1667) of an elephant as the supporting base for the Egyptian obelisk found in the Dominicans' garden. It is the shortest of the eleven Egyptian obelisks in Rome and is said to have been one of two obelisks moved from Sais, where they were built during the 589 BC-570 BC reign of the pharaoh Apries, from the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. The two obelisks were brought to Rome by Diocletian, during his reign as emperor from 284 to 305, for placement at the Temple of Isis, which stood nearby. The Latin inscription on the base, chosen by the pope who commissioned the sculpture to support the obelisk found on the site, Alexander VII, is said to represent that "...a strong mind is needed to support a solid knowledge". The inspiration for the unusual composition came from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ("Poliphilo's Dream of the Strife of Love"), an unusual 15th century novel probably by Francesco Colonna. The