Pontificate wildly about king being turned to stone (12)

I believe the answer is:

petrifaction

'being turned to stone' is the definition.
(petrified literally means turned to stone)

'pontificate wildly about king' is the wordplay.
'wildly' indicates an anagram.
'about' is an insertion indicator.
'king' becomes 'R' (abbreviation for rex, king in Latin).
'pontificate' is an anagram of 'petifaction'.
'petifaction' going around 'r' is 'PETRIFACTION'.

I've seen this clue in The Times.

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