YNOT EUROPE – Sweden’s highest court has rejected an appeal from a church seeking official recognition, allowing to stand a lower court’s ruling that the church’s name likely would offend Christians.

For two years, controversial Spanish artist Carlos Bebeacua has sought to register the Madonna of Orgasm church as a religious community in Sweden. According to Bebeacua, who calls himself the church’s cardinal, “orgasm” embodies a much broader concept than the sexual connotation. In fact, he noted, the orgasm is God and therefore should be worshipped.

“The orgasm is the ultimate feeling of lust,” Beceacua told Swedish tabloid Kvällsposten. “It shouldn’t be limited to ejaculation. You can reach it through art or by looking at a landscape and thinking ‘Wow!’”

Bebeacua also averred the literal translation of “Madonna” is “my lady,” and reserving the term for the Virgin Mary is a linguistic mistake.

Kammarkollegiet, Sweden’s legal, financial and administrative services agency, rejected Bebeacua’s application on the grounds the church’s name would be offensive to Christians, who harbor longstanding and widespread definitions of the terms “Madonna” and “orgasm.”

In November 2008, the Stockholm County Administrative Court overruled the agency after Bebeacua presented evidence Christians in Lövestad, where the church is located, welcomed the church into the religious community. Among those in favor of the church, according to Bebeacua, was the Church of Sweden’s local parish priest.

In April 2009, Sweden’s Administrative Court of Appeal sided with Kammarkollegiet and reversed the lower court’s ruling. According to the appeals court, pairing the words “Madonna” and “orgasm” in the church’s name would “cause offence not only in the broad groups of the population that have Christian roots, but also in society as a whole.”

Bebeacua appealed that ruling to Regeringsrätten, Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court, which declined to hear the case because justices could find no serious legal error in the appellate court’s consideration and the issue was not likely to set an important precedent.

Bebeacua, a resident of Lövestad, founded the Madonna of Orgasm church shortly after his painting of the same name sparked outrage during the 1992 World’s Fair in Seville, Spain.