A French court on Thursday turned down a Catholic group's request to ban a controversial film poster that blends a cross with a Nazi swastika, ruling that the image fits with the film's story line.
Designed by Oliviero Toscani, best known for his provocative Benetton fashion ads, the publicity poster for the coming film "Amen," by Constantin Costa-Gavras, has stirred protest from Jewish and Christian leaders in France.
A Catholic group known as AGRIF, or the general alliance against racism and for the respect of French integrity, went to court Tuesday to argue that the poster constituted a "manifest and illicit disturbance toward Christians" and should be banned.
The poster is intended to convey the film's assertion that the Vatican bears partial responsibility for the death of millions of Jews during the Holocaust by having remained silent.
The Paris court ruled Thursday that "the poster is in perfect accord with both the work it announces and the contemporary thought of the French episcopate." The judge noted that France's Catholic Church itself said in 1997 that its silence during World War II was a mistake.
The French-produced, English-language film by Greek-born Costa-Gavras opens in France on Wednesday. It is based on the story of an SS officer who struggled in vain to convince Protestant and Catholic leaders in Germany and the pope to condemn the Holocaust.
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said last week the Vatican had no comment on the film. The Vatican has consistently defended its wartime pope ever since controversy surrounding Pius' role during the Holocaust erupted in the 1960s.
France's Catholic Church last week criticized the poster as an "unacceptable lack of respect," and the country's leading Jewish figures signed a petition saying "this amalgam of the Nazi symbol with a religious symbol (is) unhealthy."