Okay. So.
First of all, here is Pope Francis's Angelus address from the day the Synod closed (that is, two days ago). This is the closest thing to an official papal explanation of this farce that we're liable to get, and it supports the Marian interpretation. What the point was of having the buffoons in the Dicastery for Communications trot out the "generic non-religious pro-life symbol" explanation was, I do not know. Much as I generally support Francis, he definitely doesn't hire "only the best people".
As to the question of depicting Mary in states of undress, I'm sorry to be so blunt about something like this, but it makes a difference whether the statue is nude or merely topless. Apparently there are photographs of it other than the commonly circulated ones where you can see a thin skirt of some description. I've seen some news sources describe the statue as nude and others describe it as topless. Assuming it's merely topless, nursing Maries have a long history in Western Christian iconography; next to none of it is from the last few hundred years (with a couple of exceptions such as this drawing I saw on Tumblr recently), because within the last few hundred years women's breasts have developed a sexual connotation in Western culture and art that they didn't have previously. If breasts don't have this sexual connotation in Amazonian culture (either writ large or in whatever specific culture in the Amazon produced the statues), there's nothing unprecedented about this culture depicting Mary topless.
If the statue is meant to be completely nude, then there isn't really any precedent for that that I'm aware of, but an image being nonstandard or not comporting with previous artistic norms doesn't automatically make it a pagan idol. This Crux article (which is dismissive of the Marian interpretation) describes a "middle" position of seeing the statues as merely an in-poor-taste embrace of indigeneity for the sake of indigeneity, and I think that's a reasonable takeaway. "This doesn't look Catholic, but I don't know enough about Amazonian culture to dispute it" (to paraphrase the meme from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) is a sentiment I've actually heard from a lot of people I know; I think that's a reasonable takeaway too. Goodness knows it wouldn't be the first time Pope Francis has made support for Third Worldist cultural and artistic ideas a higher priority than it probably should be. (I'd remind people, though, that John Paul II was also "liberal"-leaning on interfaith issues, and indeed did things like kissing Qur'ans and putting Buddhist statuary in the 1986 Assisi prayer meeting that at the time invited criticism similar to the Pachamama stuff now.)
Is this sort of thing a valid reason for people with conservative or traditionalist sensibilities to dislike Francis or think that he isn't a very good pope? Among other things, yeah, that's fair. Is it sufficient grounds to conclude that he's a crypto-pagan infiltrator who's bringing the abomination of desolation into the walls of the Vatican? That, I think, is (as the great secularist Carl Sagan said) an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
Nathan, I think part of the problem here wasn't just the use of, um, non-standard imagery, but also the complete lack of any willingness to address what the intent of doing so was. It should have been obvious from the outset that the very strange ceremonies the Holy Father was going to be taking part in would definitely raise some eyebrows at the least. But the powers that be apparently think it is beneath them to offer an account of their actions when people are scandalized by them, and we end up with the Pope himself referring to the statues as Pachamama and then simply
batting away the idolatry charge without explanation. It seems rather wild to think the Holy Father is actually worshiping carved wooden images of a pagan goddess, but what seems less wild is that doing so is being tolerated by the Vatican for political reasons. It is a part of human nature to react with anger when we see something we don't understand. Provided there is a defensible explanation here, the Church's leadership couldn't have done much worse in showing it.
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