But frankly, I would not expect the usual reporter, editor, or "fact" checker to be so intimately familiar with the level of detail required to know that the subject was not a statue of Christ. Opinion? Molehill.
Maybe not the average reporter, but in an organization like the New York Times, that still claims to have layers of fact checkers, I very much would expect that
someone, somewhere in the chain, would know enough about Roman Catholic theology to know this. You don't have to be Roman Catholic to know it. I'm not RC, and I've known it since my early or mid teens. This is why the RC church doesn't allow non-Catholics to take Communion -- because they don't expect the non-Catholics to believe that the gift they would be receiving is the actual body of Christ and, therefore, would not appreciate it.
I'm also not Jewish, but I know that the Ark of the Covenant isn't a reference to Noah's Ark.
If you're going to write about something, you have a responsibility to do enough research to not convey glaringly erroneous "information" in your articles.