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BBC's banned satire on Vatican released

Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent
Tuesday August 9, 2005
The Guardian

Popetown, the cartoon satire about the Vatican that proved too hot - or too unfunny - for the BBC to handle last year, was last night said to be being released as a DVD by a private company.

The 10-part programme, originally commissioned in 2002, which features an infantile, pogostick-wielding pontiff voiced by the comedienne Ruby Wax, provoked the wrath of many British Catholics, including the church's hierarchy, in an orchestrated campaign to secure its cancellation.


Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell declared the series, which he had not seen, as "an irreverent, gratuitous and publicly funded attack on faith."

The complainants were particularly outraged that the show had been commissioned at a cost of about £2m. Some took it as a sign of the BBC's alleged anti-Catholic bias, even though the director general, Mark Thompson, is a Catholic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1545246,00.html