Catholics Outraged at `My Sweet Lord' Chocolate Crucifix Display

Mar 30, 04:10 PM

Current Headlines: NEW YORK _ A controversial artist outraged city Catholics Friday with plans to display a nude 6-foot chocolate Jesus during Holy Week. The exhibition was canceled.

Cosimo Cavallaro's anatomically correct candy Christ, titled "My Sweet Lord," was made from almost 200 pounds of dark chocolate. The sculpture was to be displayed in a street-level window at the Roger Smith Hotel's Lab Gallery starting Monday.

The hotel canceled the exhibition on Friday and the gallery's director, Matt Semler, resigned.

"It's an all-out war on Christianity," fumed Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. "They wouldn't show a depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. with genitals exposed on Martin Luther King Day, and they wouldn't show Muhammed depicted this way during Ramadan. It's always Christians, and the timing is deliberate."

Cavallaro, who is best known for slathering both a Hell's Kitchen hotel room and model Twiggy with melted cheese, insisted the timing was purely coincidental.

"The choice of Easter was that there was availability in the gallery now," he said.

Cavallaro said he crafted his first chocolate Christ in 2005, but a series of events, including the death of Pope John Paul II, kept it from being displayed.

Dominick Bria, a Connecticut resident visiting St. Patrick's Cathedral Friday, bristled at the concept. "It's disgusting," he said. "Whoever is doing it is really sick."

Maria Localio, 45, agreed. "It doesn't take into account the religious sensitivities of other people," she said.

Others said they didn't mind the sculptor's choice of material but were offended by the nudity.

"He's not wearing any clothes at all," said Debbie Charan, 40. "Why would they want to do something like that?"

Cavallaro had an answer. "The whole thing of putting on the loincloth, I find it ridiculous," he said. "There's nothing to hide. There's nothing shameful about this."

The sculpture was to be suspended 18 inches above a cross chalked onto the floor. The scene was to be unveiled nightly through Easter Sunday.

But after a flurry of phone calls and e-mails by religious and secular groups slamming the display as "hate speech," the display was canceled.

"I don't think any of us expected a public response like the one that Bill Donohue gave," said Semler, founder and creative director of The Lab. "I'm not sure what the best move is right now. It's not hate speech, this sculpture. The only hate speech I've seen today has come from Bill Donohue's desk."

Cavallaro, an Italian immigrant who was raised a Catholic, insisted he's not looking to offend anyone. "This person is talking from a very narrow window," he said of Donohue. "They're not allowing themselves to open their hearts. . . . If it makes them feel better, I'll ask for their forgiveness and do 10 Hail Marys, but they should just lighten up and be more accepting of people."

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