Benetton pulls offensive kiss ad after Vatican protest

Italian clothes company Benetton backed down and pulled a photo montage showing the Pope kissing a leading imam from its new global ad campaign yesterday after the Vatican issued a stern condemnation.

The company, which is no stranger to controversy over its advertising campaigns, said it was “sorry that the use of the image had so hurt the sensibilities of the faithful.”

The statement came shortly after the Vatican expressed “the firmest protest for this absolutely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father.”

Benetton’s poster showed Pope Benedict XVI kissing on the lips Egypt’s Ahmed el Tayyeb, imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and a leading voice in Sunni Islam. Relations between the Pope and the Al-Azhar imam, one of the leading voices in Sunni Islam, have been very tense particularly after Pope Benedict expressed his solidarity with the victims of an attack on a Coptic church in Alexandria. The statement was interpreted by Imam Tayyeb as interference and he did not send a delegation to an inter-religious meeting hosted by Pope Benedict last month.

Benetton yesterday launched a new global advertising campaign called UNHATE that contained a series of photo montages of political and religious leaders kissing. It defended the campaign, saying its purpose “was solely to battle the culture of hate in all its forms”.

The Vatican strongly criticised the Benedict ad.

“We must express the firmest protest for this absolutely unacceptable use of the image of the Holy Father, manipulated and exploited in a publicity campaign with commercial ends,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement. “This shows a grave lack of respect for the Pope, an offence to the feelings of believers, a clear demonstration of how publicity can violate the basic rules of respect for people by attracting attention with provocation,” he said.