(Strasbourg) Lithuania breached Sekmadienis Ltd’s right to freedom of expression and will have to pay a 580 euros’ fine as compensation for damage. This is the ruling that the European Court of Human Rights issued today on the case of the clothing company that launched an advertisement campaign with references to Jesus and Mary, considered by Lithuanian justice as “a crime against public morality”. According to the European Court, instead, “the advertisements were not offensive and did not incite hatred. Neither did the national authorities provide reasonable justifications as to why such use of religious symbols would be a crime against public morality”. When the advertising campaign came out in 2012, the Court’s release states, “about one hundred people” had protested with the consumer protection authority” (Scrpa) that had consulted a number of organisations, including the Lithuanian Bishops Conference, which at the time (also according to the Court’s release) had stated that “the degradation and distortion of religious symbols to deliberately alter their meaning is a crime against public morality, especially if it is done for commercial gain”. According to the company, instead, the exclamations “Jesus!” and “Mary!” should have been regarded as “ordinary exclamations in spoken Lithuanian”. Sekmadienis Ltd had been fined 580 euros for its campaign. Today, the Court of Strasbourg overturned the Lithuanian justice’s ruling.