Benetton Cries for Argentina

Reuters reported March 27 that, “An exhibition in Buenos Aires by controversial Benetton photographer Oliviero Toscani was canceled by its presenters after a flap over a photo deemed offensive to Catholics, a company spokes-woman said.’

First, officials “asked that a photo of a 13-year-old girl dressed in a nun's habit kissing a 14-year-old boy in priest's garb be pulled from the show, said Josefina Braun, Benetton's director of communications for Argentina and Uruguay.’

"Benetton's answer was to scrub the entire exhibit, which featured about 40 photos previously used in Benetton ads that were to be shown in the city's Recoleta Cultural Center.’

The photographer reportedly called critics’ opinions of his work a “neuropsychiatric problem.’

Toscani, whose pictures include some called “image terrorism” by Vatican officials according to the report, said he was mystified as to why the photo was banned, saying the move “left everyone poorer.’

Irish Public Schools Can Pay Priests

In the United States, it is only relatively recently that the use of state funds for religious schools was deemed unconstitutional. Ireland recently rejected our example.

"The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed an application by the Campaign to Separate Church and State to prevent the minister for education paying chaplains in community schools,” said the March 26 Irish Times.

"The court ruled such payments were constitutional, but added that it was constitutionally impermissible for a chaplain to instruct any child in a religion other than the child's own without the consent of parents.’

"Mr. Justice Barrington also said a religious denomination was ‘not obliged to change the general atmosphere of its school merely to accommodate a child of a different religious persuasion who wishes to attend that school.’”