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Posters depicting nurses and doctors on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic as saints are “blasphemous” and an insult to Christian iconography, Romania’s Orthodox Church claims.
City officials have said they would ask the company behind the “Thank you doctors” campaign to remove the ads at locations around Bucharest after church leaders complained they were offensive — to both Christians and health workers.
“It is not just a blasphemous act but also an insult to the very honorable profession of doctors who, like all of us, do not think they are saints or improvised saviors and do not demand a public cult,” Vasile Banescu, a spokesman for the church, said, according to Reuters.
He slammed the comic book-style illustrated art — which shows a doctor wearing a halo-like headpiece and holding a stethoscope — as a “visual mistreatment of Christian iconography.” He also said it promotes a “dystopian vision” of the pandemic.
But the ad agency behind the posters, McCann Worldgroup, insists it has committed no real sin.
“[They’re] a daring artistic choice but one which is in no way following a political, religious or any other kind of purpose,” McCann Romania said in a statement.
“It is a gesture of gratitude for doctors.”
Bucharest city hall said it plans to ask the firm to replace the posters with “images that bring homage to hero doctors without hurting the faith of passersby.”
Romania has reported 11,978 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Wednesday evening, and at least 688 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
With Post wires



