Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CATHOLIC CHURCH

Catholics furious after artist writes ‘paedo’ in stolen communion wafers

Religious groups are suing a Spanish artist over his latest exhibit: consecrated wafers spelling out the word "paedophilia".

Published: 25 November 2015 10:44 CET
Catholics furious after artist writes ‘paedo’ in stolen communion wafers
Photo: Abel Azcona/Twitter

The exhibit, entitled Buried, by Spanish artist Abel Azcona has caused controversy since it opened on Friday. 

The exhibition tells the stories of people who were shot and who disappeared during the Spanish Civil War, but also includes a retrospective of Azcona’s work, which includes several pieces that are critical of Spanish society and religion, including the piece “Amen” in which 242 holy wafers spell out “paedophilia”.

The exhibit has caused such outrage that on Tuesday evening someone sneaked into Pamplona City Hall and stole the holy wafers.

Azcona acquired the over 200 hosts used in the exhibit by “pretending” to go to Holy Communion then pocketing the wafers, according to critics, who launched a change.org petition to get the exhibit closed down.

As of Wednesday morning, the petition had amassed over 96,000 signatures. 

“The Holy Sacrament of Jesus Christ should not be put on the floor or stolen,” one person commented on the petition. 

“How could a human do such a thing?!” wrote another commenter. 

Hidden camera shots show how Azcona pocketed the hosts during mass. 

“Religion is at the same level as cancer or AIDS, and in fact, it has killed more people than those diseases,” Azcona said in a recent interview with Spanish magazine Jot Down.

The artist, 27, is no stranger to controversy. His previous works include Dark Room during which he was locked in a darkened room for 60 days and nights with minimal food, and La Calle, for which Azcona received hormone treatment to become a transexual prositiute. 

Lawsuit 

Religious groups reacted angrily to the latest exhibit; the Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers filed a lawsuit to close the exhibit, claiming that “over 40,000 people protested the exhibit in less than 20 hours” in a change.org petition and on social media.

“Pamplona City Hall – stop this serious public profanity now! It's a crime. Sign!

“The lawsuit accuses the artist of “stealing consecrated hosts from masses in Madrid and Barcelona” accusing him of a “repeated crime of desecration and crimes against religious sentiment” under Spain’s Penal Code.

“I've just received a triple criminal lawsuit. Association of Catholic Lawyers, Diocese and Archbishop. Happy Christmas to me.” Abel Azcona tweeted. 

“If there’s a trial, there’s a trial,” Azcona told local newspaper, Noticias de Navarra, highlighting that he had “committed no crime”.

Azcona also criticized the “Christians” who had been sending him abusive messages on social media and those who had been leaving graffiti messages around Pamplona calling for the exhibit to be closed.

Catholic websites also reacted angrily, infovaticana.com ran the headline “Pamplona City Hall, in the hands of Satan”.

Even political parties waded into the row, with the Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN) making a request in the Parliament of Navarra that the exhibit be banned, arguing that it “threatens the beliefs of a section of society”.

The request was rejected in parliament.

“It has a slight whiff of censorship,” said the spokesman for Basque nationalist party Bildu, Adolfo Araiz. 

Spain’s ruling Popular Party has criticized the exhibit calling it an “absolute lack of respect” in a press release.

Protest against the exhibition on Tuesday night. 

With all the controversy brewing around the exhibit, on Tuesday evening, the hosts mysteriously vanished, as critics staged a protest outside the exhibition. 

“We have informed the artist and have both decided that this part of the exhibition will not be replaced but that the exhibition will continue until January,” Pamplona City Hall said in a press release on Tuesday evening.

CATHOLIC CHURCH

At least 3,000 paedophiles active in French church since 1950: report

Thousands of paedophiles have operated inside the French Catholic Church since 1950, the head of an independent commission investigating the scandal told AFP, days ahead of the release of its report.

Published: 3 October 2021 09:16 CEST
French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards.
French archbishop Cardinal Philippe Barbarin leads his last mass,on June 28, 2020. Barbarin was released on appeal on January 30 for his silence on the sexual abuse of a priest, and resigned quickly afterwards. Photo: Jeff Pachoud/AFP

The commission’s research had uncovered between 2,900 and 3,200 paedophile priests or other members of the church, said Jean-Marc Sauve, adding that it was “a minimum estimate”.

The commission’s report is due to be released on Tuesday after two and a half years of research based on church, court and police archives, as well as interviews with witnesses.

The report, which Sauve said runs to 2,500 pages, will attempt to quantify both the number of offenders and the number of victims.

It will also look into “the mechanisms, notably institutional and cultural ones” within the Church which allowed paedophiles to remain, and will offer 45 proposals.

READ ALSO: 

The independent commission was set up in 2018 by the French Catholic Church in response to a number of scandals that shook the Church in France and worldwide.

Its formation also came after Pope Francis passed a landmark measure obliging those who know about sex abuse in the Catholic Church to report it to their superiors.

Made up of 22 legal professionals, doctors, historians, sociologists and theologians, its brief was to investigate allegations of child sex abuse by clerics dating back to the 1950s.

When it began its work it called for witness statements and set up a telephone hotline, then reported receiving thousands of messages in the months that followed.

SHOW COMMENTS