Excerpt:
After political outcry and personal threats, an Italian priest has replaced a Christmas Nativity scene that critics said depicted Mary, the mother of Jesus, with a Muslim body covering.
The Rev. Franco Corbo, a 76-year-old pastor from the southern town of Potenza, was the subject of a nationwide backlash on TV and social media and received hundreds of abusive telephone calls at his parish as a result of his Nativity scene.
The characters, including Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, were originally shown in Tuareg costumes worn by tribes from the Sahara desert but have now been replaced by African figures from Senegal.