This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Each Christmas season, Satanists, atheists, and others with animosity toward Christianity insist on creating holiday Nativity displays with obscene subjects, goats' heads, and the like.
This year, perhaps one of the most egregious attacks on the Christmas story actually came from a church in Italy.
There, a priest presented the Nativity with two women as the featured holy couple, leaving Joseph out of focus.
A report from One America News said the backlash has condemned the imagery for being "dangerous" and "blasphemous."
The presentation appeared at the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Capocastello di Mercogliano, near Naples, the report said.
Father Vitaliano Della Sala explained his agenda:
I wanted to show with this scene that families are no longer just the traditional ones. In our parishes we see more and more children from the new types of families that exist and are part of our society, children of separated and divorced people, gay couples, single people, young mothers.
He justified the presentation by referring to the recent announcement from Pope Francis to allow priests to hold "blessings" for same-sex duos.
The OANN report said one of the Mary figures was "dressed in rainbow colors."
An online petition was launched immediately and had assembled thousands of signatures.
The petition said, "An LGBT nativity scene with ‘two mothers’ was set up in the Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Capocastello di Mercogliano, in the province of Avellino. A blasphemous and provocative representation that distorts the meaning of the Nativity scene itself and of the Holy Family: both with the removal of Saint Joseph, sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, and with the very serious message relating to the ‘two mothers’ which ‘sanctifies’ a practice as illegal as the buying and selling of gametes."
The report noted Sen. Maurizio Gasparri of the co-ruling Forza Italia party charged that the imagery "offends all those who always had respect and devotion for the Holy Family."
