Scottish Catholic Observer

The Vatican says it plans to take legal action over a Benetton advert that shows Pope Benedict XVI kissing a leading Egyptian imam.

The Vatican move comes in spite of the Italian clothing company saying it would pull the ad.

The images have been altered for the advert that is part of a global campaign featuring photo montages of political and religious leaders kissing each other on the mouth.

A statement said the Vatican had told its lawyers in Italy and around the world to ‘take the proper legal measures’ to stop the use of the photo, even in the media. The statement did not disclose if the Vatican intended to sue Benetton directly for damages.

The Vatican statement said the ad was ‘damaging to not only to dignity of the Pope and the Catholic Church but also to the feelings of believers’.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi called the Benetton ad an ‘absolutely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father, manipulated and exploited in a publicity campaign with commercial ends’.

“This shows a grave lack of respect for the pope, an offence to the feelings of believers,” he said. “A clear demonstration of how publicity can violate the basic rules of respect for people by attracting attention with provocation.”

A spokesman for Egypt’s al-Azhar institute, whose grand imam was pictured kissing the Pope, described the advertisement as ‘irresponsible and absurd.’

Other ads in the campaign feature US President Barack Obama kissing Chinese President Hu Jintao, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“We are sorry that the use of an image of the Pontiff and the imam should have offended the sensibilities of the faithful in this way,” Benetton said in a statement.

The purpose of the ad campaign, the compnay claimed, ‘was solely to battle the culture of hate in all its forms’.