The mainstream Austrian press has now got hold of the debate over a controversial exhibition in Vienna’s Cathedral Museum and the director is wading right in. Austrian papers have not given the Alfred Hrdlicka exhibition too much attention until recently. The celebrated 80-year-old Austrian artist’s outspokenness and bold paintings are nothing new to country with a tradition for daring art.

Now the museum’s director Bernhard Böhler has told Die Presse newspaper he is amazed by the fierce criticism the museum has received for exhibiting a homoerotic version of the Last Supper, which had to be taken down on the request of Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. The exhibition provoked some complaints from visitors but it was the uproar on religious blogs in German and in the United States that really hit both the museum and the cardinal hard.

Boehler put this “massive verbal hostility” down to the fact that most of the critics don’t know Hrdlicka’s art well enough. He said he was “astounded by the heatedness of the debate.”

“The protests mainly came from Christian fundamentalist circles in the United States and eventually spilled over into Germany,” he says. “So it came from people who neither had the knowledge of the seriousness of Alfred Hrdlicka’s work nor had seen the exhibition.”

The Italian newspaper Il Giornale said the disputed painting wasn’t taken down fast enough and criticises the exhibition. In his blog, their Vatican correspondent Andrea Tornielli comments that nudes in paintings were not scandalous in themselves — Michelangelo painted nudes in the Sistine Chapel — “but here we’re talking about something different, we’re talking about a homosexual orgy with the Apostles as the main characters!”

Böhler has emphasised the museum never meant to offend anyone and says it does not necessarily agree with all of Hrdlicka’s approach. But he has said artists have the right to provoke and that the museum is entitled to offer them a platform.

“In Austria there has been a long-standing dialogue between art and the church which was led by Otto Mauer,” Böhler says, referring to the 20^th Century Austrian artist and priest.

In his statement yesterday, Cardinal Schönborn also stressed that Hrdlicka was a great Austrian artist. It sounds like they’re saying this issue looks different if you’re Viennese and that people there would understand it better than foreigners would. Do you think this should be taken into account in judging this exhibition?

We recently wrote about an exhibition in Vienna’s Roman Catholic Cathedral which has caused quite a stir — it included a homoerotic version of Christ’s Last Supper by Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka. The picture was quickly taken down at the request of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna.

The cardinal has now made a statement about the exhibition regretting the work was ever shown but describing Hrdlicka as one of Austria’s most notable artists. He also says art inspired by biblical subjects is something to be welcomed, even if the artists themselves are atheists. The full statement, sent to Reuters in English, is copied below.

There’s been a lot of criticism of Cardinal Schönborn on religion blogs connected to this exhibition. What do you think of his statement?

“The Vienna Cathedral Museum has dedicated a special exhibition, for which the museum’s director, Dr Bernhard Böhler, is personally responsible, to the artist Alfred Hrdlicka on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Hrdlicka is one of Austria’s most notable living artists who, probably more than any other living artist, has devoted himself to the suffering and downtrodden human being and has appealed for “compassion” with the “Passion”. He expresses this “compassion” in a most perturbing way. Hrdlicka`s best-known works in this respect are the “Danse macabre of Plötzensee” (Berlin) and his impressive Holocaust Memorial (Memorial Against War and Fascism) in front to the Albertina Gallery in Vienna. It is for this reason that I agreed to an exhibition of his works at the Cathedral Museum, albeit without detailed knowledge of the individual works to be exhibited.

“Alfred Hrdlicka has dealt with biblical subjects all his life, especially with the suffering of Christ. In spite of the fact that he claims to be a communist and an atheist, he nevertheless has a burning interest in the Holy Bible, and has personally admitted that he has a great longing for faith.

“This exhibition does not mean that the museum identifies itself with all of Hrdlicka`s works. In some of them he oversteps the essential threshold of respect for the Sacred. From the point of view of committed Christians, certain of his works must quite clearly be rejected. I obviously would not have agreed to have blasphemous or pornographic works exhibited. I therefore explicitly regret that a work of this kind was exhibited without my knowledge. I ordered the particular work - which committed believers find deeply distressing - to be removed on 20 March.

“Nevertheless, I still hold the opinion that we must welcome the fact that artists who do not share our faith, or are still searching for belief, occupy themselves so intensively with biblical subjects.”

The sketchy black-and-white picture shows the Twelve Apostles drinking, dancing, and well, getting extremely friendly with each other. It certainly isn’t the version of Christ’s Last Supper that most people are familiar with…

Austrian artist Alfred Hrdlicka’s version of the Last Supper as a homosexual orgy was supposed to be one of the highlights of an exhibition at the Dommuseum, the museum of Vienna’s Roman Catholic cathedral. An initial favourable review by the local Catholic news agency didn’t seem to find anything wrong. But blink and it’s gone — thanks to the intervention of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of Vienna, after the painting sparked criticism in Austria and as far away as the United States. Here’s a protest article in German (with 61 comments and an explicit video about the exhibition) and a comically bad machine translation into English.

The museum, a stone’s throw away from St. Stephan’s Cathedral, says it never intended to offend anyone but stands by its decision to celebrate Hrdlicka’s 80th birthday with a retrospective of his biblical-themed works.

Was the cardinal right to tell the museum to remove the most controversial piece? Should the exhibition have taken place in a museum linked to the Catholic Church anyway?

Looking from the outside in, it seems odd the museum was completely unaware of the reaction it would provoke. But Hrdlicka — an atheist who has spent his artistic life being inspired by the Bible (the most thrilling read ever, he says) — is a celebrated public figure in Austria, a country with a tradition of outlandish artists.

Take the now-feted Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele who were condemned for their “pornographic” art at the beginning of last century. Their paintings now sell for millions of euros and the city uses them in its tourism ads.

The museum says a lot of the complaints about the Hrdlicka exhibition came from abroad, where people had read about the exhibition online. Many Austrians who came to the display didn’t seem to have a problem with it, museum director Bernhard Böhler says. He points out that only a minority of the works provoked on-the-spot complaints.

And the cardinal’s office argues that just because the museum exhibited the works, it does not mean that it identifies with all of them. Böhler agrees: “We look for art on biblical themes, but we can’t always choose how the artist will interpret them.”

But by displaying the works, is the museum nevertheless endorsing them? What would have happened if the museum had decided to display similar works concerning the Prophet Mohammad? Is this a valid comparison to make?

It seems unlikely that the exhibition will be closed - it would be slight towards an artist who is as much a part of Vienna as its coffee houses and cobbled streets. Hrdlicka is described on the website of Austria’s chancellor (prime minister) as the country’s “most renowned contemporary sculptor.” His Memorial Against War and Fascism has been on display in the capital’s central Albertinaplatz since 1988.

Hrdlicka also has admirers outside of Austria. At a recent exhibition in Berlin, the leader of Germany’s Left Party, Oskar Lafontaine, compared him to the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. “Like the great Spaniard, the Viennese artist, with his unruliness and his passion, is an unforgiving observer of his time.”

But it seems not everyone is a fan and his works have obviously deeply offended some in the Christian community — something which both the diocese and museum acknowledge.

Hrdlicka, on the other hand, remains slightly bemused by it all. “I’ve got nothing against the Catholic Church,” he says. “But all this has nothing to do with me … I don’t really mind whether the painting is displayed or taken down.”

The exhibition is on display in Vienna’s Cathedral Museum until May 10.

As if it weren’t enough to share a name with Karl Marx, the new Roman Catholic archbishop of Munich has now written a book called, you guessed it - Das Kapital.

Subtitled “a polemic”, Reinhard Marx’s book argues that “Capitalism has never triumphed so shamelessly as today,” and that “the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer,” because of global capitalism. Now doesn’t that sound familiar?

The book, which will go on sale in Germany from November 5, tackles issues such as the outsourcing of labour to cheaper countries and the effect chasing profits can have on the welfare of the workforce.

Marx, who became archbishop in the Bavarian capital earlier this year is an up-and-coming figure in German Catholicism — Munich was Pope Benedict’s old diocese and the new Das Kapital, to be published 140 years after the original, is sure to earn him attention outside of the church too.

So is the archbishop a revolutionary? “There are new and good reasons as to why Karl Marx should not just be left sitting on the shelf,” he says. Watch this space.

His name is Marx, he’s an outspoken German and he criticises capitalism. But he’s not who you might think he is. Reinhard Marx wants German companies to stop giving their top managers hefty salaries and focus on more than profit margins. So far, comparisons with Karl Marx stand up. But then there’s his job. Reinhard Marx has just been named as the new Roman Catholic archbishop of Munich.

The Bavarian capital is Pope Benedict’s old diocese, one that usually earns its archbishop a cardinal’s hat after a few years in office, so Marx is clearly an up-and-coming figure in German Catholicism.

“It is ridiculous that when businesses publish bad figures or sack staff or miss their profit targets a manager can still be given a golden parachute,” Marx, currently the bishop of Trier, says in a German radio interview. Trier is Karl Marx’s birthplace but the two men are not related.

Marx, a strong defender of Catholic social teaching and head of the German Bishops’ Conference “Justitia et Pax” committee on social issues, reckons that businesses should also think about rewarding managers who are loyal and aim to protect jobs.

Pursuing profits is not always good business practice, he says: “When maximizing profits is the central goal for directors, meaning making 15, 20, 30, 40 percent returns, then it’s a risky path.”

A debate over corporate pay has been bubbling in Germany over the past few weeks, characterised by front page pictures of the beaming chief executive of Porsche, who reports say earned 60 million euros ($88 million) this year heading the sports car firm.

Even Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for businesses to be more open about publishing what top executives earn.