So Benneton launched another poster campaign, one which depicted political and religious leaders kissing under the slogan Unhate. One of these posters showed Pope Benedict kissing Egypt’s Ahmed el Tayyeb, imam of the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo and the Vatican threw a tantrum. So Benneton pulled that particular poster.

All’s fair in love and commerce, I suppose, so this should have been the end of the story. But it isn’t, because the Vatican continued to throw a tantrum.

A statement said the Vatican had told its lawyers in Italy and around the world to “take the proper legal measures” to stop the use of the photo, even in the media.

Emphasis mine and, in deference to the Streisand effect, here is the poster:

I will resist the temptation to suggest that the reason the Vatican finds this poster so objectionable is that the imam is too old to appeal to the Pope.