A show inside a cathedral featured raw chickens in diapers. The German president was in the audience

A show wrong a German cathedral earlier this period that featured raw, plucked chickens wrapped successful diapers onstage has prompted the religion and municipal leaders to apologize that the amusement “hurt spiritual feelings.”

BERLIN -- A show wrong a Catholic cathedral successful Germany earlier this period that featured raw, plucked chickens wrapped successful diapers onstage — and the country's president and the section archbishop successful the assemblage — has prompted the religion and municipal leaders to apologize that the amusement “hurt spiritual feelings."

The show, "Westphalia Side Story,” was portion of a May 15 solemnisation to people the 1,250th day of Westphalia, a portion successful northwestern Germany.

Video footage shows 1 pistillate and 2 shirtless men singing “Fleisch ist Fleisch” (“Meat is meat”) — seemingly spoofing Austrian set Opus' 1984 popular opus “Live is Life” — with scythes and dancing with the dormant chickens connected a signifier successful beforehand of Paderborn Cathedral's altar.

Performance institution bodytalk said successful a connection Friday that the amusement featured work-in-progress excerpts from “Westphalia Side Story" — which references the American philharmonic "West Side Story."

The finished show, which volition premiere successful September, is expected to beryllium portion of the 1,250th anniversary’s taste programming.

“It was not meant to beryllium a spoof astatine all,” bodytalk cofounder Rolf Baumgart said successful an email to The Associated Press. “As Westphalia is simply a agrarian dominated portion with a turbulent past our probe was focused connected that.”

The spectacle besides prompted an online petition — signed by much than 22,000 radical by Friday day — that asks Paderborn Archbishop Udo Bentz for a idiosyncratic apology, arsenic good arsenic penance. The signers besides privation him to reconsecrate the cathedral aft it was “desecrated by this performance.”

In a connection posted online to the cathedral's website much than a week aft the performance, the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe and the church's enactment said that the contented of the show wasn't known to the organizers oregon the venue.

The cathedral, the connection said, is often big to taste events and has begun an interior review. They besides promised to much cautiously vet projected events successful the future.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's bureau didn't instantly instrumentality a petition for remark connected Friday.

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Philipp Jenne contributed to this study from Vienna.

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