Pope Francis Says Hello to Chocolate Selfie

All right, no Pope-sickle jokes, you hear?

At an audience on Wednesday, February 5, Pope Francis was introduced to a life-size sculpture of himself, carved from a 1.5-ton block of dark chocolate.

The tasty Pope Francis is the work of chocolate artist Mirco Della Vecchia, an instructor at Rome’s Accademia de Maestri Cioccolatieri.   Della Vecchia and his 20 students worked for a full month to create the chocolate pontiff, using dark  chocolate from Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.

The award-winning chocolate sculptor has previously created the world’s longest chocolate bar and the tallest ice cream cone.

Along with the papal treat, Della Vecchia intends to donate another 1.5 tons of chocolate to Caritas, the Catholic Church’s charitable organization.

Here are some of the chocolatier’s other notable creations.