Police in Rome on Christmas day detained a topless protester after she tried to remove the baby Jesus from the Vatican’s nativity scene.
The woman was wearing only pants and shoes.
A photographer from Reuters news agency said the woman jumped over guard rails and rushed onto the nativity scene shouting, “God is woman!” She had the same message written on her back.
Video of the moment posted to Twitter shows the topless woman being tackled to the ground by a police officer in a black cape, right in the middle of the nativity scene with a statue of the mother of Jesus looking on.
The protester managed to get her hands on the naked baby Jesus, but it was left dangling from the manger as the cop, quickly joined by several others, wrestled with her.
The Ukrainian “sextremist” Alisa Vinogradova was identified by her fellow members of the international feminist activist organization, Femen, on group’s the website.
The group is known for its topless activists who challenge patriarchies around the world.
The Femen website said the act protested the “Vatican’s infringement of the rights of women to their own bodies,” in particular the Holy See’s “promotion of the ban on abortion” and “sacred condemnation” of contraception.
“A child is not from a god, but from a woman! For a woman is God!” the website states.
The Catholic church is a longtime target of the group, CNN reported. This is reportedly the second time the group has tried to steal the Vatican’s baby Jesus. The first attempt, also unsuccessful, was in 2014.
Vinogradova made her move about two hours before Pope Francis delivered his Christmas message, according to Reuters.
