A remarkable protest took place in Cologne Cathedral during the 2013 Christmas morning service. A woman who had been sitting in the pews suddenly leapt onto the altar, bared her breasts, and revealed a message scrawled across her torso: “I Am God.”
Closer inspection determined that she was not, as she had claimed, the Supreme Being but was, in fact, Josephine Witt, a member of the international provocation group FEMEN, upset at the conservative hierarchy of the Catholic Church. After her arrest, Witt told reporters: “Cologne is the capital of Catholics in Germany, and [Cardinal] Meisner stands for a very conservative orientation.”
Cardinal Meisner was unfazed, saying “I’m 80 years old. I’ve lived through so much: first the Nazi period, then the entire Communist period – something like this can’t shock me after that.”
An outraged parishioner who slapped Witt as she was pulled from the altar was fined 100 euros while Witt was found guilty of disturbance of the free practice of religion – a crime which could have seen her imprisoned for up to three years but she got off with a mere 1,200 euro penalty.