Bank apologizes for removing steeple from artwork

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- A bank apologized this week for removing a church steeple from a student's contest-winning sketch that was used on a company holiday card.

Youssef A. Nasr, chief executive of HSBC USA, said in a letter that the contest didn't allow religious imagery, and that the judges should have chosen another winner rather than altering the fifth-grader's illustration.

"I can assure you that HSBC did not in any way intend to belittle Gregory Paladino's religious beliefs," Nasr said. A faxed apology was sent Monday.

Gregory's sketch -- which won $1,000 for his Roman Catholic school, Our Mother of Sorrows Elementary in the Rochester suburb of Greece -- showed a white dove hovering over a snow-covered village.

When the card was printed, a steeple and a cross were removed from a church, making it look like the other houses in the scene.

The boy, who now lives in Buffalo, phoned a Rochester radio station early this month to express his disappointment. The school principal wrote Nasr, saying the school would return the prize unless the bank apologized.

"I feel they're taking political correctness too far, and it was an insult to a fifth-grade child," Principal Samuel Zalacca said in Thursday's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.