THE Bishop of Worcester has criticised supermarket chain Lidl for erasing Christian crosses from images of churches on its products.

The budget supermarket chain, which has branches in Newtown Road and Blackpole Road in Worcester, and Worcester Road, Malvern Link, faced a backlash when the erasure of crosses was revealed this week.

The company's Eridanous own-label range of Greek-style food features a picture of the famous Anastasis Church on the Aegean island of Santorini, but with the cross airbrushed out.

The omission was first noticed by a customer on Belgium, and since then the supermarket has attracted criticism from customers across Europe because of it.

The Bishop of Worcester, Rt Rev John Inge, said: "There are those who want to airbrush faith out of the public sphere, but that does not seem a constructive and sensible position.

"If the company does not want, for whatever reason, to feature crosses on its packaging, then why didn't they use a picture that didn't include a church?

"Using a picture of a church, but removing the cross, is just not sensible."

A spokesman for Lidl UK said: "We have been selling our highly popular Eridanous own-label range in Lidl stores across Europe for over 10 years now, and in that time the design of the packaging has been through a number of updates.

"We are extremely sorry for any offence caused by the most recent artwork and would like to reassure our customers that this is not an intentional statement. In light of this we will ensure that all feedback is taken into consideration when redesigning future packaging."