The exhibition Jesus Loves, held at the Egidien church in the German city of Nuremberg, was closed just a few days after its opening.

One of the pastors of the church, Thomas Zeitler, explained that the exhibition aimed to critically address issues such as abuse in the church, misogyny and homophobia, with pictures by the gay painter Rosa von Praunheim.

However, the press spokesman of the Nuremberg deanery, Joachim Baumgardt, reported that the church council met on Tuesday afternoon and decided to cancel the expo permanently.

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Flood of criticism

The reason for the short-term closure was the flood of criticism that they receive by email, social media and telephone,most of them stating that the pictures were so provocative.

The church council stressed that "there had been a considerable amount of hatred, agitation, insinuations and unsubstantiated accusations", so that "in this atmosphere of insecurity, hurt and anger, we currently no longer sees any possibility of conducting a purposeful and reconciliatory discourse".

"The role of the church is to unite, heal and reconcile in the power of the Gospel, we very much regret that the exhibition has had the opposite effect", said executive pastor Martin Brons.

According to Baumgardt, most of the negative feedback came from people who had not seen the exhibition, but had heard about it because of media coverage.

Explicit images

The pictures in the exhibition, which is part of the Christopher Street Day Nuremberg Pride Week program, were all taken this year and considering the church context in which they are shown.

They focus o religion, sexuality, love and death and show partly explicit homoerotic and sexual acts. Some of the pictures were behind a curtain with a note saying that they were for adults only.