NEW YORK (Reuters) – A life-size chocolate sculpture of a naked Jesus will finally be displayed in New York starting in late October, seven months after an outcry by Roman Catholics forced a different gallery to cancel its exhibition.

The chocolate Jesus will be joined by sculptures of several fully clothed saints, but the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said it will not protest because, unlike before, there are no plans to put the “anatomically correct” Jesus in public view during Holy Week.

The Proposition gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood will present “Chocolate Saints … Sweet Jesus,” an exhibition timed to coincide with All Saints’ Day on November 1. The show will run October 27 to November 24.

Back in March, the chocolate Jesus by artist Cosimo Cavallaro was to be exhibited in a street-level window of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Midtown Manhattan, giving casual passers-by a view of Jesus’s private parts.

Protests, including a call to boycott the affiliated Roger Smith Hotel, forced the gallery to scrap the showing.

“We still don’t approve but the conditions have changed,” said Kiera McCaffrey, spokeswoman for the Catholic organization.

The new exhibition will take place indoors in a neighborhood full of art galleries, she said.

Images on the Proposition gallery’s Web site (http://www.theproposition.com/wp/chocolate-saints-sweet-jesus/) show the work suspended in air, depicting Jesus as if on the cross.

A gallery statement said Cavallaro was raised as a Catholic altar boy and questioned church precepts but always held a fondness for Holy Communion.

“Remembering the mystical/transcendental quality and rushes of memory associated with the Catholic wafer received during Holy Communion, he recalls equating that ritual of ecstasy to his own experience of chocolate,” the statement said.

The flap recalled another New York clash between art and religion. In 1999, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tried to withdraw a grant from the Brooklyn Museum of Art over a painting depicting the Virgin Mary as a black woman splattered with elephant dung and adorned with cut-outs from pornographic magazines.

UNIONTOWN, Pa. – A man who stripped naked in a Fayette County convenience store for no apparent reason has been convicted of indecent exposure and criminal mischief.

A jury rejected the defense offered by 26-year-old Gregory David Moore Jr. The Uniontown man said he didn’t realize what he was doing because he had consumed a spiked drink at a party.

Moore went to the store after the party and was pre-paying for some gasoline when he undressed and told the female clerk, “I want everything.”

Police say the incident was recorded by surveillance cameras.

Moore was convicted Thursday. His sentencing is scheduled next month.

DE SOTO, Mo. – The naked truth: Three eastern Missouri men were willing to go to extreme lengths to get some beer.

That’s the accusation after an incident in the early hours of August 18th at Fish’s Quick Stop in De Soto. Store clerk Vicky Gaines says a masked man walked in and began doing the hula dance.

Police say the plan was for the naked dancer to create a distraction while another man took a case of beer from the store. It didn’t work.

Gaines called police. As the naked man and his accomplice joined a third man in a car, a customer got their license plate number. All three were caught a few days later.

The men, ages 19 to 23, face charges of shoplifting and indecent exposure.

BERLIN – A 41-year-old American tourist on a sightseeing tour of Germany streaked through a historic city’s center, apparently just to see what it was like to be naked in Nuremberg.

People who were treated to the Monday afternoon spectacle were less than impressed and pointed the streaking sprinter out to nearby traffic police, who took the man into custody, authorities said Tuesday.

The man, whose name was not released, was told to put his clothes back on and was ordered to pay a fine of euro200 ($270), police said.

The tourist was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and told officers that he had not known streaking was illegal in Germany and that he just wanted to see what it was like, police said.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A gang stripped a South African man before super gluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report on Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

“The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut,” SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.

The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.

South Africa is battling one of the world’s highest crime rates which has prompted concerns that violence might mar the 2010 soccer World Cup, which the country is due to host.

A police spokesman could not immediately comment on the report. No one at Netcare 911 could be reached.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – A gang stripped a South African man before supergluing him to an exercise bicycle while they ransacked his house, according to a report on Thursday.

SAPA news agency said the attackers, dressed in suits, hijacked a man in his 50s and forced him at gunpoint to take them to his home in Johannesburg.

“The victim was then forced to strip, after which he was superglued to the seat of an exercise bicycle, his hands were superglued, as were his feet and then his mouth was superglued shut,” SAPA quoted Mark Stokoe, a spokesman for emergency services Netcare 911, as saying.

The man was rescued about three hours later when his partner arrived home, SAPA said.

South Africa is battling one of the world’s highest crime rates which has prompted concerns that violence might mar the 2010 soccer World Cup, which the country is due to host.

A police spokesman could not immediately comment on the report. No one at Netcare 911 could be reached.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A life-size sculpture of a naked Jesus made out of chocolate has angered a Roman Catholic organisation and forced a Manhattan art gallery to reconsider exhibiting it during Easter week.

The sculpture “My Sweet Lord” by Cosimo Cavallaro was to be exhibited for two hours each day next week in a street-level window of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery in Midtown Manhattan. It was set to open on Monday, days before Good Friday when Christians mark the crucifixion of Jesus.

“We’re considering our options,” Matthew Semler, the gallery’s artistic director, said on Friday. “We’re still assessing the situation.”

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called for a boycott of the accompanying Roger Smith Hotel, writing to 500 religious and secular organisations.

“This is an assault on Christians during Holy Week,” said Kiera McCaffrey, director of communications for the league, which describes itself the largest U.S. Catholic civil rights group.

“They would never dare do something similar with a chocolate statue of the prophet Mohammad naked with his genitals exposed during Ramadan,” she said.

Semler said the hotel had no knowledge of what the gallery planned to show and was being unfairly targeted. Moreover, he said the work was not irreverent.

“It’s intended as a meditation on the Holy Week,” Semler said of the sculpture, which depicts Jesus as if on the cross.

A photo of the piece on the artist’s Web site (http://www.cosimocavallaro.com/) shows the work suspended in air.

The Catholic League has no intention of bringing legal action but seeks to punish the hotel with a boycott because “they’re the ones bringing this into the mainstream, in the heart of Manhattan, for any child holding his mother’s hand to see,” McCaffrey said.

She was further irked by an unconfirmed report that Cavallaro invited the public to come take a bite out of the sculpture.

Semler said that was only a joke by the artist.

New York is familiar with peculiar clashes between art and religion. In 1999, then, mayor Rudolph Giuliani threatened to withdraw a grant from the Brooklyn Museum of Art for showing a painting depicting the Virgin Mary as a black woman splattered with elephant dung adorned with cut-outs from pornographic magazines.

WETHERSFIELD, Conn. – It’s not your garden variety calendar. Members of the Men’s Garden Club of Wethersfield stripped naked and posed for a calendar intended to raise money for the club and its projects. The man, who ranged in age from 40 to 80, were photographed in the buff in secluded areas around town. Modesty prevailed, however, as garden objects were strategically placed for the shoots.

The calendar also offers their favorite recipes and monthly tips for caring for roses. The group maintains the Frank Weston Rose Garden is town.

Richard Prentice, 69, aka “Mr. January” is featured seated in a wheelbarrow and shares his recipe for margarita pie.

“Maybe everybody has some desire to be naked, if they have the opportunity,” said Prentice, a retired science teacher.

The club couldn’t get enough men to pose for each month, and so November features a group shot of all the men fully clothed. They aren’t the first group of men in the state to bare all for charity. Last year, a group in Lyme posed for a calendar to raise money for affordable housing.

The $15 calendar goes on sale this weekend at a crafts fair and at Spicy Green Bean Deli and House of Images Gallery on Main Street.