St. Petersburg citizens converged en masse on Sunday to protest the destruction of a bas-relief sculpture of Mephistopheles removed from a historic 1910 building designed by architect Alexander Lishnevsky, according to Sophia Kishkovsky in the New York Times.

A statement was sent to Russian press by a Cossack who took credit for removing and destroying the sculpture, claiming its depiction of the devil is offensive to Russian Orthodox adherents. The act sparked a debate between those agreeing that the sculpture is repulsive and others, including one priest, criticizing the sculpture’s removal by noting that imagery of demons can be constructive reminders of evil. Meanwhile, prosecutors have begun investigating the destruction of the work.

“Liberal intelligentsia, including members of the Russian church, have warned that homegrown fundamentalists are behaving toward culture like the Islamic State,” wrote Kishkovsky: Activist members of God’s Will, a radical Christian group, vandalized artworks on view in “Sculptures We Don’t See,” an exhibition at the Manezh building next to the Red Square in Moscow, as Artforum previously reported here.