Tickets to Madonna's September 12 concert -- part of her "Confessions" global tour -- had been sold nearly two months in advance despite protests from Christian churches.

The Orthodox Church has urged believers to stay away from the show, in which Madonna sings from a crucifix, wearing a crown of thorns, describing it as "blasphemy".

"We will never allow her to desecrate our greatest icons. We demand to drive Madonna out of Russian territory," Leonid Simanovich-Nikshich, head of a group calling itself the Union of Orthodox Religious Banner Bearers, told about 100 supporters at a central Moscow square.

"They say that Madonna is very rich, but what is all that wealth if a person has lost their soul?"

In other news, Madonna has angered animal rights campaigners by importing baby pheasants
from France for the shooting season.
The 'Hung Up' singer purchased 1,000 chicks to be raised alongside a further
31,000 birds she brought in from Wales, on her 1,200-acre Wiltshire estate.
Although both Madonna and her film director husband Guy Ritchie have given
up shooting, they plan to open up their estate to clients paying up to
£10,000 a day when the season starts on October 1.
The couple's celebrity friends Brad Pitt and 'X-Men: The Last Stand' star
Vinnie Jones - who taught Madonna how to shoot - are also frequent guests on
hunts.
The pheasants cost as little as 70p each, and animal welfare groups claim
they are hatched in a battery farm environments for the sole purpose of
being shooting targets.
Andrew Tyler, director of Animal Aid, said: "Shame on Madonna. She thinks
that when she puts on her plus fours she is part of landed gentry.
"But this is not in harmony with nature. It is the production of factory
birds to provide a shooting gallery."
A spokeswoman for Madonna said: "Both Madonna and Guy have stopped shooting.
We can confirm that the estate got 1,000 birds from France as an experiment
this year but we won't be doing it again."