Madonna’s ‘crucifixion’ condemned
In a sold-out stadium just a mile from the Vatican City, the lapsed-Catholic diva wore a fake crown of thorns as she was raised on a glittering cross during the Rome stop of her Confessions world tour.
The Vatican accused her of blasphemy and provocation for even considering staging the sham crucifixion on its doorstep; anger Madonna further enflamed prior to the show by inviting Pope Benedict to come and watch.
“To crucify yourself in the city of the Pope and the martyrs is an act of open hostility,” Cardinal Ersilio Tonini told La Stampa daily. “It’s a scandal created on purpose by astute merchants to attract publicity.”
Muslim and Jewish leaders also condemned the fake crucifixion.
“It’s not the first time Madonna stages such an act. We deplore it, we feel it is an act of bad taste,” said Mario Scialoja, the president of the Muslim World League in Italy.
The self-styled Queen of Pop went on to pepper her two-and-a-half hour show with more controversial imagery, at one point showing photographs of the Pope after those of former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
“Did you know two miracles have taken place in Rome?” the star, dressed in skin-skimming black, later joked with the crowd. “Italy won the World Cup and the rain stopped before my show.”
The 70,000 fans, crammed into the Olympic Stadium, shrugged off the scandal by dancing and singing as the star performed songs from her latest album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, and classics, such as Like a Virgin.
Yet the cheering lulled when she was raised on the cross and some fans from predominantly Catholic Italy confessed their disappointment.
“The crucifixion was unnecessary and provocative. Because this is Rome, I wish she’d cut it out. But it’s Madonna, she’s an icon, and that balances out her need to provoke,” said 39-year old Roman, Tonia Valerio.
It is not the first time Madonna, whose father is a Catholic Italian American, has caused religious anger for her controversial religious and sexual imagery.
Catholic leaders condemned as blasphemous her 1989 video for hit song Like a Prayer, featuring burning crosses, statues crying blood and Madonna seducing a black Jesus.
In 2004, a Vatican group warned that her latest religious belief Kabbalah, a mystical form of Judaism, was a potential threat to the Roman Catholic faithful.
Madonna looks likely to face another storm when the tour reaches Moscow in September, where the Russian Orthodox Church has advised its followers to boycott the show.
