Plans to re-erect a Baroque column with a gilded statue of the Virgin\n Mary in the centre of Prague have triggered a religious controversy in \nthe Czech Republic, one of Europe’s most atheist countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A \ngroup of Catholics and Prague history fans hope to erect a replica of \nthe original column — built in the 1650s but torn down in 1918 as a \nsymbol of the Habsburg empire — at its initial site on the city’s \ncentral Old Town Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The day the column is re-erected, we’ll know there has been reconciliation,” says sculptor Petr Vana, who carved the replica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past, similar plans were already blocked under both Nazi and Communist rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\n 1989 — shortly after the fall of Communism — local Catholics and \nhistory enthusiasts set up the “Association for the Renewal of the \nMarian Column.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vana told AFP that he had been asked to select the technology and draw up a budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It\n was then that I came to understand the immense spiritual depth of the \nproject. For me, it’s no ordinary contract,” says Vana, who has spent \ntwo decades working on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The original 15-metre (49-foot) column,\n erected in the early 1650s, was topped by a sandstone statue of the \nVirgin Mary by Baroque sculptor Jan Jiri Bendl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It commemorated Prague’s defenders against the protestant Swedish army at the end of the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– ‘Cynical monument’ –<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But\n in the eyes of ordinary Czechs, the column came to symbolise the \nenforced re-Catholisation by Austria’s Habsburg rulers of a country that\n venerated the religious reformer Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake \nas a heretic in 1415.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On November 3, 1918, just days after \nCzechoslovakia gained independence from the disintegrating \nAustro-Hungarian empire, a crowd led by anarchist Franta Sauer tore down\n the column, shouting “Far from Vienna, far from Rome!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many \nCzechs turned their backs on the Catholic Church at that time, and many \nmore did so during the Communist regime of 1948-1989, which depicted the\n Church as the enemy of the people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Believers are now a minority \nin the EU member state of 10.6 million people, where 8.6 million people \nidentified as non-believers or refused to fill in the box marked \n“religion” in a 2011 census.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The column was a symbol of religious\n intolerance,” said one opponent of the project, Jan Vano, during a \nrecent meeting on the Old Town Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zdenek Zacpal, a \ntranslator, described the monument as “cynical” because it was erected \nnot far from the spot where 27 leaders of a protestant revolt were \nexecuted in June 1621.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He brandished a banner that read: “We don’t want the column of humiliation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
– Bureaucratic trap –<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The association has found itself caught in a bureaucratic trap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even\n though it possesses a building permit — scheduled to expire in July —\n the municipal authorities argue that the document is merely a general \none that does not include permission for construction to begin at a \nspecific site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And an earlier rejection issued by the previous \nmunicipal council in September 2017 was still in force, according to the\n authority’s spokesman, Vit Hofman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the current city council, \nelected in 2018, the decision was “like a ball and chain and it doesn’t \nknow which way to turn,” said Vana who, along with other association \nmembers, takes turns in guarding the site day and night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent\n days, the association’s members have twice started digging up the \nsquare’s paving stones, but have been prevented from doing so by \nmunicipal police whose van is parked at the site around the clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’re only missing a single piece of paper. I hope we get it soon so that work can begin,” Vana said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prague’s\n archbishop Dominik Duka has spoken in favour of the project, but merely\n on a personal level, “as a Catholic and a citizen.” The archdiocese has\n taken no official line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the time being, until a final decision is taken, Vana’s 60-tonne sculpture sits aboard a boat moored on the Vltava river in the city centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n