Protesters Smash 'Piss Christ'

A pair of extreme Catholic protesters celebrated Palm Sunday this weekend by bursting into the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon, France, and smashing Andres Serrano’s (in)famous photograph “Immersion Piss Christ,” and some other works of art they objected to, with hammers. According to a French report translated by the New Yorker, the men were from the organization Civitas, (“for a Catholic city”), which seeks “the restoration of the social reign of Jesus Christ over civil society.”

The vandals also damaged a second work, depicting the torso of a nun with her hands in her lap, and physically threatened three guards before fleeing, according to the BBC. Police are currently looking for the suspects, who have been identified in photos from a large protest against the works on Saturday. That protest drew 800 protesters, and the gallery’s director tells the Irish Times he’s gotten tens of thousands of emails demanding he remove the photo—which he derides as “injunctions from the Middle Ages.” (More Andres Serrano stories.)