Thousands of angry Catholics in Britain have written to the BBC complaining about a planned cartoon mocking Pope John Paul II.
Petitions are circulating in parishes and some Catholics are even risking jail by refusing to pay their TV licence fees if the show goes out as planned this summer.
Mr Luke Coppen of the Catholic Heraldnewspaper said the cartoon was "gratuitously insulting" and had caused "quite a big uproar".
The BBC said complaints about "Popetown" - a satirical cartoon about office politics in the Vatican - had numbered "a few thousand".
Extracts from the show have appeared on the Internet where discussion boards are buzzing.
A spokesman for the Catholic church in England declined to comment.
The clash comes at a critical time for the BBC. A furious row with the government over its reporting of the run-up to war with Iraq left the corporation bloodied and weakened. And now its future funding is up for review.
PA