Priest's Lego Vatican on display at Philadelphia museum

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- A Philadelphia museum is displaying a priest's Lego replica of the Vatican in its atrium ahead of Pope Francis' planned visit to the city.

The Franklin Institute said Father Bob Simon's Lego Vatican -- which the priest estimated contains about half a million pieces -- serves to "unite" the current Art of the Brick exhibit and the upcoming Vatican Splendors exhibit.

Simon said it took him 10 months to build his creation using reference photos from books and the Internet.

"There was one photo in particular, it was a cover, a book jacket of a book I had that had a great picture of the facade," Simon told CBS Philadelphia. "I used that for doing the facade, and I used Google Earth, as well."

Simon told KYW-AM he was inspired by a trip to an adult Lego convention a few years ago.

The priest said he doesn't know the total number of Lego bricks in his Vatican replica.

"I think there's about half a million pieces in it," he said. "I'm not sure. I think there are about 44,000 cobblestones of the square, 6,000 round bricks that make up the colonnade and under the little cobblestones, there's 12,000 2×2 tiles that are under there. I knew if I was going to build the Vatican, it had to be big!"