Commercial showing nuns eating potato chips for Communion sparks outrage

A Catholic watchdog group is calling for a ban on a commercial airing in Italy because it depicts nuns eating potato chips instead of communion wafers.

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The Italian Association of Radio and Television Listeners said the commercial for Amica Chips is blasphemous and “offends the religious sensitivity of millions of practicing Catholics by trivializing the comparison between the potato chip and the consecrated object,” according to CNN and the Catholic News Agency.

“The commercial shows a lack of respect and creativity,” Giovanni Baggio, the association’s president, said in a statement obtained by The Guardian. “It is a sign of an inability to do marketing without resorting to symbols that have nothing to do with consumption and crunchy food.”

The Catholic newspaper Avvenire wrote in an editorial, “Christ has been reduced to a potato chip, debased and vilified like 2,000 years ago.”

With “Ave Maria” playing in the background, the ad shows the mother superior seemingly substituting chips for the traditional wafers before Mass, surprising the priest and other nuns. As the commercial builds, the nuns crunching of the chips nearly drowns out the song.

The commercial has caused outrage in some sectors of Italy where the seat of the Roman Catholic Church sits.

However, the group responsible for the ad, the Lorenzo Marini Group, told The Guardian that the ad’s concept was based on “strong British irony,” expressing “the irresistible crunchiness of Amica Chips” in an exaggerated setting.

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