Defaming photo of Christ triggers protest

In what may snowball into a controversy, an official journal of a Catholic diocese in Kerala, carried a picture of Jesus Christ with a beer mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other, on the cover page of its June issue.

Not only this, the same picture has also been published in a Telugu daily 'Sakshi' owned by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy's family.

Protesting the faux pas, Christian organisations and leaders from both states held agitations and sit–ins. Some have also blocked the traffic and even damaged windowpanes of its respective headquarters.

Vincent Samuel, secretary to the local bishop in Kerala, said "the mistake" had crept into the magazine as an oversight. "It happened without the knowledge of the clergy. Both priests and laymen constitute the editorial board of the journal, but the former are concerned only with the content. Design and layout are done by laymen," said Samuel.

National Daily, TOI, quoted him saying, no such error had ever occurred in the past 12 years of its existence.

"The picture in question seems to have been downloaded from the Internet and blown up," he said, adding, "The publication of the journal has been suspended indefinitely".

In Andhra Pradesh, angry protestors demanded that a case be booked against those responsible for the publication of the photograph, which hurt the religious sentiment of people.

Christian masses took to the streets in Ongole, Nandyal, Chittoor, Kurnool, Hyderabad, Kadapa, Guntur, Nizamabad and many other places.

The Editorial team of the journal has also apologised on a TV channel saying, the mistake was "committed by downloading a picture from the Internet."

Jaganmohan Reddy, Chairman of Jagati Publishers, which publishes the daily, sought forgiveness of the Christian community for inadvertently publishing the picture.