Horror expressed after ‘blasphemous’ poster reappears in Rome

BACK in 2017 an anonymous Italian artist who signs his work ‘Hogre‘ responded to the Cardinal George Pell sexual abuse case in Australia by creating a poster showing Jesus with an erection. Copies of the poster were displayed on bus stops – and the artist got himself arrested.

We now learn that the poster has reappeared. Writing for LifeSiteNews, Doug Mainwaring expressed his horror:

A vile poster depicting Jesus as a sodomite and pedophile has appeared outside Rome’s Museum of Modern Art. 

Titled ‘ECCE HOMO ERECTUS’, the poster leaves little to the imagination. It shows a depiction of Jesus stands before a boy kneeling in prayer, with a hand on the boy’s head. An erection protrudes from beneath the depiction’s garment, right in front of the young boy’s face.

Pontius Pilate uttered the words ‘Ecce homo’, ‘Behold the man’ (John 19:5), when he presented Jesus to the jeering crowd after Jesus had been flogged and given a crown of thorns. The poster artist, who signs his name ‘Hogre’, has taken Pilate’s poignant proclamation and added erectus in order to present Christ not as the one who suffered for our sins and carried them to the Cross, but as a sexual being who preys upon boys.

Mainwaring quotes Fabrizio Ghera, a right-wing local leader of the Brothers of Italy as saying in a Facebook post:

This morning, when we went there, we noticed a vulgar image that depicts a child kneeling before Jesus Christ, the latter in a clear state of excitement and with the hand at the head of the [boy]. It is unacceptable that such stuff should be exposed to the public, in an important museum of the city — also with public funds — and also frequented by families.

 

Ghera, inset, put up a photo of the reworked poster and addressed the mayor of Rome:

As Brothers of Italy we ask the mayor …  urgently [to] remove the blasphemous poster, unworthy and offensive not only to Christians but also to Rome.

Conservative Italian journalist Giorgia Meloni, who is the national leader of the Brothers of Italy, also made a plea to the mayor of Rome on Facebook:

Mayor Raggi, remove IMMEDIATELY this disgust exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome. I cannot understand how anyone could authorize a massacre of this gravity in a municipal museum of the Eternal City. This shame must disappear immediately and the perpetrators be sanctioned.

It’s reported here the artist’s works have also appeared in London:

His work is extremely critical of consumerism and contemporary politics. He tackles delicate current affairs like the London housing crisis and immigration with high doses of satire and wit.

Here’s one of his London posters: