The November edition of the French publication, Photo, which was the issue that was being sold in the United States in December, had a picture on the cover of a bare-breasted woman hanging on a cross with a crown of thorns around her head. The cover story was entitled “The Life of Jesus in Photos.”
The fourteen page-story had a picture of a totally naked pregnant woman (she was supposed to be Mary, carrying Jesus) kneeling in prayer; at her side was Joseph who was holding another child, thus suggesting that Mary and Joseph had children of their own. There was a Nativity scene in a garage that again showed Mary and Joseph each holding a child. The picture of the Miraculous Blood of the Virgin showed blood coming from Mary’s bare breast accompanied by the statement, “Blood flowing from the breast of Mary is similar to that which on the cross flowed from the side of Christ.”
Other pictures included a pornographic Mary Magdalene, a naked woman standing over a bloody decapitated man, etc. In a section called “Incarnation of the Word,” it said that hatred of the human body has been “animating proponents of Christianity for 2,000 years.”
The Catholic League sounded the alarms on this one with the following news release:
“This feature in the November Photo is taken from the novel, INRI, and was the result of two years of work by photographer Bettina Rheims and artist Serge Bramly. Why it took two years to complete this savagery suggests that French Satanists work much more slowly than American ones.
“It is disturbing to know that artistic standards in France have fallen so low that the Ministry of Culture actually contributed to this masterpiece. The good news is that Cardinal Lustiger of France, along with the nation’s chief rabbi and the country’s preeminent newspaper, Figaro, have all condemned this outrage unequivocally. So, too, does the Catholic League. One final note: we thank Msgr. Michael Wrenn for translating this hate speech.”
