United Colors of Benetton Pulls Unhate Pope Ad After Vatican Protests

Clothing company United Colors of Benetton has gotten itself in hot water for a new controversial ad campaign for its Unhate initiative. One photo shows the Pope kissing another man on the month, and it will be pulled from the campaign.

Benetton is now promoting a new initiative, called simply Unhate, in support of the Unhate Foundation.

It's meant to promote peace and harmony between people of different cultures – and what better way to do that than by presenting leaders of different cultures sharing the love.

As noted above, one of the pics has the Pope kissing another man on the lips. He is imam Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb and, useless to say, the photo (also attached to this article) is doctored.

It's precisely with this that the Vatican took issue: Benetton took a legit photo and altered it to show something else for commercial profit, the Daily Mail informs.

Not only that, but such action speaks of a complete lack of respect for the Pope.

“Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi called the unauthorized and 'manipulative' use of the pope's picture in the photo montage 'totally unacceptable' and suggested it might take legal action against the company,” the British publication writes.

“This is a grave lack of respect for the Pope, an offense against the sentiments of the faithful and a clear example of how advertising can violate elementary rules of respect for people in order to attract attention through provocation,” Lombardi said in a statement.

The Pope was the only one of the lot of politic and religious figures (including Barak Obama, Angela Merkel, Mahmoud Abbas and Nicolas Sarkozy) to take such a firm stand against the Unhate campaign and the way it's promoted.

However, his words were loud enough for Benetton to hear because the clothing giant has already announced its decision to pull the controversial ad, as the National Post informs.

“Benetton said on Wednesday that it was pulling a photo montage of the pope kissing Egypt’s Sheikh al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb that was part of a new global ad campaign and that had outraged the Vatican,” the aforementioned publication writes.

In a separate statement, Benetton says it was never its intention to offend, but rather to use the Pope's image to spread a message of peace and love, or, as the name of the campaign says, Unhate.