VATICAN CITY (AP) — Vandals have beheaded a sculpture that includes the Virgin Mary giving start to Jesus that had been exhibited within the cathedral within the Austrian metropolis of Linz and drawn criticism from some Catholics who stated it was blasphemous.

The sculpture had been on view on the St. Mary Cathedral, Austria’s largest, as a part of an artwork set up venture on girls’s roles, household photos and gender equality, the Linz diocese stated in an announcement. It added that the incident, which occurred on Monday, had been reported to police.

The id of the vandals wasn’t identified. However Alexander Tschugguel, an Austrian traditionalist Catholic liable for the so-called “Pachamama” act of vandalism in the course of the Vatican’s 2019 Amazon synod, stated in a social media submit Tuesday that he had been contacted by these accountable.

Tschugguel praised the “Hero of Linz” and posted what he stated was an announcement from the nameless vandal explaining the motivation. The assertion implied that the particular person’s emails and calls to the diocese to complain concerning the sculpture had been ignored.

“Subsequently, in view of this abominable and blasphemous caricature, pressing and decisive motion was required,” the assertion stated, including that the beheading was the quickest method to disfigure the sculpture so it not resembled Mary.

The episcopal vicar for training, artwork and tradition within the Linz diocese, the Rev. Johann Hintermaier, condemned the beheading of the statue.

“We have been conscious that we have been additionally upsetting debate with this set up. If we now have damage individuals’s spiritual emotions, we’re sorry, however I strongly condemn this violent act of destruction, the refusal to have interaction in dialog and the assault on the liberty of artwork,” the diocesan assertion quoted him as saying.

The sculpture was on a pedestal in the course of the room contained in the cathedral, exhibiting Mary sitting on a rock and giving start. The diocese stated it referred to the nativity scene within the cathedral, which is often known as the Mariendom.

The artist who created the “crowning” sculpture, Esther Strauss, additionally condemned the destruction, in line with the Linz diocese assertion.

“Most portraits of the Virgin Mary have been made by males and have due to this fact usually served patriarchal pursuits,” she stated, including that in her sculpture “Mary will get her physique again.”

“Whoever eliminated the top from the sculpture was very brutal,” Strauss stated. “For me, this violence is an expression of the truth that there are nonetheless individuals who query girls’s proper to their very own our bodies. We now have to take a really agency stance in opposition to this.”

Tschugguel turned a hero to traditionalists in 2019, when he snuck right into a Vatican-area church, stole Amazonian indigenous statues of pregnant girls, and threw them into the Tiber River in a videotaped act that was shortly shared on-line.

Amazonian delegates to Pope Francis’ synod, or assembly, had introduced the statues with them to Rome and had displayed them within the Vatican gardens throughout a gap prayer for the assembly, which was discussing how the Catholic Church may higher serve the indigenous trustworthy within the area. Critics complained that the show of “pagan” idols within the Vatican was sacrilegious.

The episode turned referred to as the Pachamama incident, named for the forms of fertility statues concerned, and was visceral proof of the lengths to which conservative and traditionalist Catholics have been prepared to go to vent their opposition to historical past’s first Latin American pope.

Ultimately, Italian police divers recovered the statues from the river and returned them to the Vatican. Francis apologized to the Amazonian delegates, and the statues have been displayed within the closing classes of the synod.

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Related Press author Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.