Catholic backlash over BBC's Pope on a pogo-stick

Thousands of angry Roman Catholics have written to Britain's BBC complaining about a planned cartoon show mocking the Pope as a puerile preacher on a pogo-stick, the broadcaster said.

Petitions are circulating in parishes and some Catholics are even risking jail by refusing to pay their TV licence fees if the show goes out as planned this summer.

"I am not prepared to pay for the Holy Father to be mocked," said human rights activist James Mawdsley who met Pope John Paul after the Vatican intervened to have the campaigner released from a Burmese jail.

Luke Coppen of the Catholic Herald newspaper said the cartoon was "gratuitously insulting" and had caused "quite a big uproar". The BBC said complaints about "Popetown" - a satirical cartoon about office politics in the Vatican - had numbered "a few thousand".

Extracts from the show have appeared on the Internet where discussion boards are buzzing.

Mawdsley hit the headlines in December 2001 when the Pope helped secure his release from a Burmese jail where he had served 14 months of a 17-year sentence for handing out pro-democracy leaflets.

"I will not pay the £1,000 fine, so that means prison - never mind," he told Reuters.

Mawdsley said at least 6,000 people had written to the BBC complaining, while 28,000 had signed a protest petition.

A spokesman for the Catholic church in England declined to comment.

The clash comes at a critical time for the BBC. A furious row with the government over its reporting of the run-up to war with Iraq left the corporation bloodied and weakened. And now its future funding is up for review.

Last week, it was accused of caving in to the government after several lines were cut from its satirical radio show "Absolute Power", which poked fun at Prime Minister Tony Blair and the culture of spin.

The BBC declined to comment on media reports that it was thinking of shelving Popetown.

CHX Productions, which is producing the show for the BBC and uses the voice of American comedienne Ruby Wax for its pogo-ing Pope, also declined to comment.