Polish Black Madonna gets a make-over

Religious groups outraged as magazine tampers with image of the Virgin Mary.

The pop culture magazine Machina has relaunched after a three year break this week with the perfect PR stunt – wind up religious people by superimposing the face of pop diva Madonna onto Poland’s most holy icon, the Black Madonna of Jasna Gora monastery in the southern city of Czestochowa.. News.com reports:

Pop magazine Machina published a photograph [on its front cover] of the sacred icon, with singer Madonna's face transposed over the face of the Virgin and one of the singer's children in the place of the baby Jesus, on the cover of the issue which hit the news stands today after a three-year publishing hiatus.

"The icon, along with the crucifix and the Bible, are key symbols of faith for all Christians," the monks said in a statement on their website.

"Current events have shown us where abuse of religious images and symbols can lead," the statement said, referring indirectly to the wave of protests that have hit the Muslim world since the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in several European newspapers.

The Black Madonna icon was brought to Poland in 1382 from Byzantium or the Orient.
Besides being credited with many miraculous healings, Poland's faithful attribute several battleground victories to the icon, including the halting of Soviet Russian troops at the doorstep of Warsaw on May 3, 1920.

That’s when the Poles beat back Trotsky’s Red Army, thereby foiling the Bolshevik attempt at world revolution.

But will the protests over the Danish cartoons unleash a biblical-sized flood of complaints from all sorts of religious groups demanding special treatment and protection from being offended?