The Catholic Church has criticised an Italian
television advert in which a half-naked man resembling Christ tries to
ward off the advances of an overweight dominatrix dressed in suspenders
and stockings.
The advertisement, for a type of mobile phone earpiece, shows the man tied to
a bed in a pose that evokes Jesus on the cross.
Sweating and looking anxious, he winces when a woman in tights and high heels
enters the room, thwacks whip on the bed and starts to straddle him.
"Hey Dad, can you help me?" the male actor says in English, looking
upwards as if to God.
The bizarre ad, for a company called Nodis, has been aired on a national television channel, Italia 1, which is owned by Mediaset, a company belonging to Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister.
"It's a sordid concept and incredibly insulting to those who believe in Jesus Christ," said an editorial in Avvenire, a daily newspaper owned by the Catholic Bishops Conference.
The newspaper's editor, Marco Tarquinio, said the commercial should never have
been made.
He suggested that Catholics offended by the ad should stop watching the
channel and boycott the company's products.
An association of Catholic television viewers, Aiart, made a formal protest
over the commercial.
"The reference to Christ is explicit and deeply offensive to religious sentiment," it said in a statement.
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