World-wide outrage from the Catholic community caused the Vatican to promptly threaten legal actions against international clothing retailer United Colors of Benneton, if they didn’t immediately pull one specific ad from their latest international campaign, depicted below (click to enlarge).

Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi described Benetton’s picture of Pope Benedict XVI and Sheikh Ahmed Mohamed El-Tayeb, imam of the renowned al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, a “totally unacceptable” show of “grave disrespect”. Before the ad was thwarted, Lombardi said that the Vatican was “considering the steps to take with the competent authorities to guarantee suitable protection of respect for the figure of the Holy Father”. Occording to him, the image was an “offense against the sentiments of the faithful” and evidence of how advertising can “violate the elementary rules of respect for persons in order to draw attention through provocation”.

Funny how a fictitious picture of the Pope can create complete moral frenzy, but the plethora of child-molestation cover-up cases (that Ratzinger was in charge of from 1962 up until he became Pope) doesn’t even make Lombardi flinch. In fact, when the Vatican rejected the resignation of two Dublin Auxilary Bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field, who were centrally involved in the Irish child-abuse scandal that began in 2004, Lombardi only said that it was Vatican policy to make public announcements only when resignations are accepted, not when they are rejected. He declined further comment…

The Irish government-authorized investigation into Dublin Archdiocese cover-ups, names more than a dozen current and former bishops as responsible for failing to inform the authorities about more than 170 suspected pedophiles in the priesthood from the mid-1970s to mid-1990s. Thousands of previously secret church documents show detailed church knowledge of crimes committed against several hundred Irish children. The full report can be downloaded from this page: http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PB09000504

Walsh has been a Dublin auxiliary bishop since 1990 and Field since 1997. Both continue onwards with their Holy business, completely untouched. Both are supposedly outraged about Benneton’s campaign too.

Sources:
huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/16/benetton-kissing-ad-pope-el-tayeb_n_1098243.html
SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press, Wed Aug 11, 1:48 pm ET, 2010