Crucified frog sculpture near Pope's summer holiday base provokes protests

Pope Benedict XVI's summer break at a seminary in the mountains of northern Italy has led to demands for the removal of a "provocative" sculpture of a crucified frog on show in a nearby museum.

Local Catholics have complained to the police that the work by the German artist Martin Kippenberger, on show at the Bolzano Museum of Modern Art, is a "public obscenity". It depicts a bright green frog with its tongue hanging out, nailed to a cross, with a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in the other.



Luis Durnwalder, the head of the local province, said he supported contemporary art, but not "pure provocation ... The principles of respect for popular feeling and of artistic freedom have to find a reciprocal tolerance through good will and with understanding from both sides."

Under pressure from Bishop Egger the museum curators have moved the frog from the museum entrance to the third floor, but have so far refused to remove it altogether. They said the work was not an attack on Christianity but rather a reflection of the artist's “state of profound crisis” at the time.