Pavel Hagyari, the mayor of Presov in eastern Slovakia, has unveiled plans to build Europe's biggest statue of Christ outside his city."Until now, the largest monument in mostly Catholic Slovakia has been a 12-metre Soviet soldier in Bratislava," explained Hagyari, who was elected in 2006.
"Three sculptors are already at work here. We count on private sponsors to be generous in backing this ultimate symbol of our Christian faith."
Hagyari said in January he hoped the 33-metre statue, corresponding to the age at which Christ is said to have been crucified, would help "bring in religious tourists" to Presov, where Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Lutheran dioceses have their headquarters.
Slovak newspapers have reported that the iron and concrete statue, priced at 15 million Slovak crowns (US$700 000), would be five metres taller than Europe's current largest statue at Lisbon in Portugal, and just five metres shorter than the Christ the Redeemer monument overlooking Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Presov, Slovakia's third largest city, is currently campaigning for the country's nomination as a European Capital of Culture in 2013.
Polish Americans have collected donations for another giant statue of Christ at Tarnow in neighbouring Poland, which is intended to be taller than New York's Statue of Liberty and whose costs have been put at 180 million zloty (US$78 million).
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI's former archdiocese of Munich-Freising in Germany has criticised plans to build a 50-metre Rio-style monument on Ambona mountain, near the Bavarian town of Bad Reichenhall. It accused the tourism company that initiated the scheme of trying to commercialise the Pope's link to the region.
"This mountain has religious associations, so the marketing experts had the idea of laying on something special at the top," Adelheid Utters-Adam, an archdiocese spokesperson, told Ecumenical News International on 14 February.
"But they didn't consider the situation of the local Catholic parish and had no notion of any pastoral needs, or of how Bavarians traditionally view their mountains and the world of Creation around them," she said. "It would be against our tradition to have such huge statues, which wouldn't fit into the landscape." +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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