Anti-God cover sparks Vatican backlash

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'You cannot provoke, you cannot unsult other people's faith, you cannot mock it.'

To commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the satire magazine printed an image of God as an assassin and armed with a Kalishnikov.

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Highlights

By Kenya Sinclair (CALIFORNIA NETWORK)
Catholic Online (https://www.catholic.org)
1/5/2016 (8 years ago)

Published in Europe

Keywords: Charlie Hebdo, God, religion, magazine, Vatican

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The magazine's cover reads, "One year on: The murderer is still out there."

The Agence France-Presse reported the magazine would release one million copies in France on Wednesday.

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On Tuesday, the Vatican's daily newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, condemned the French magazine for its portrayal of God as an assassin.

"Behind the deceptive flag of uncompromising secularism, the weekly is forgetting once more what religious leaders of every faith unceasingly repeat to reject violence in the name of religion - using God to justify hatred is a genuine blasphemy, as Pope Francis has said several times."

The paper added, "In Charlie Hebdo's choice, there is a sad paradox of a world which is more and more sensitive about being politically correct, almost to the point of ridicule, yet does not wish to acknowledge or to respect believers' faith in God, regardless of the religion."

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TIME reported the controversial cover is one of many ways in which the magazine remembers the people shot down by Muslim extremists who attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo last January.

The two Islamic extremists burst into the magazine's headquarters in eastern Paris in retaliation for its depictions of the prophet Muhammad.

One week after the attack, Pope Francis commented, "To kill in the name of God is an absurdity."

The pontiff then cautioned, "each religion has its dignity" and "there are limits ... If a good friend speaks badly of my mother, he can expect to get punched, and that's normal. You cannot provoke, you cannot insult other people's faith, you cannot mock it."

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