An Ice cream ad featuring a heavily pregnant nun has been banned by Britain’s advertising watchdog. The Italian ice cream manufacturer Antonio Federici’s ad featuring the pregnant nun appeared ahead of the pope’s visit to the country.
The advertising standards agency ruled that the ad featuring the lines “immaculately conceived” over an image of a sister tasting the ice cream from a tub of Antonio Federici ice cream was “likely to cause widespread offence” to the Roman Catholics. The ASA stated that it received about ten complaints about the ads which appeared in the Lady Magazine and Grazia. Antonio Federici ad is the second recent advertisement involving religious content that has been banned by the ASA, another advertisement showing a nun and a priest eyeing each other for a kiss was banned the last year.
A company spokesman said that the ASA’s ruling amounted to censorship of artistic freedom and that they would retaliate by placing another advert from the series before along the planned route of the pope’s cavalcade around Westminster Cathedral.The pontiff’s proposed visit to the UK has been marred by controversies owing to his stand on paedophile priests, safe sex, fertility treatment and homosexuality among others.
