St James the Moor Slayer, Spain's patron saint, has notched up another victory. Church officials have been forced to overturn a decision to remove a statue of the saint from the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. The statue, an 18th-century work by Jose Gambino which depicts St James on a white charger hacking off the heads of Moors beneath his rampant mount's hooves, was deemed to be offensive to Muslims.
However a spokesman for the church, which is Christendom's third holiest site after Rome and Jerusalem and attracts half a million pilgrims each year, said yesterday that, due to public anger over the proposed move, the statue will now remain in place. "It is still here on the same spot. It is not going anywhere," a spokesman for Alejandro Barral, the president of the cathedral's art commission, said. "We have decided that the statue of St James will stay in the cathedral. There is no reason why it should be removed in the near future. For the moment the debate over its future has been suspended."
| Christians have somebody who keeps the holy sites ranked in order, too? Who'da thunkit? |
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