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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The famous statue of Jesus Christ that looms over Rio de Janeiro appears on everything from key chains to T-shirts, but the Catholic Church draws the line at beer and underwear.

The Rio archdiocese, which commissioned the 125-foot statue in 1931, said on Wednesday it convinced a local brewer and a lingerie company that used the monument's image in television and print advertisements in recent weeks to withdraw their ads or face legal action.

"They surpassed rational limits," the archdiocese legal representative Antonio Passos told Reuters. "They were offending Catholics, so Rio's Cardinal Archbishop decided to put a stop to them."

While the 1,000-ton Christ the Redeemer statue serves as a backdrop in the beer ads, it has a bigger role in the underwear spot. That one features two photographs side by side -- one shows a woman posing in skimpy black lingerie and the other shows the statue covering its eyes with its hands.

The archdiocese threatened to sue the companies for using the images without permission. The church owns the land the statue was built on and the artistic rights.

Both companies agreed to scrap their ad campaigns, Passos said.