UPDATE: 30 October 2024
More… below.
UPDATE: 29 October 2024
From bad to…whatever level this is. More work by the same guy who designed this… whatever this is. BELOW.
And remember the logo for the 2025 Jubilee (which you see on the Doll-Thing?) HERE
ORIGINALLY POSTED Oct 28, 2024 at 16:38
Really? I ask the readership… a serious question… no, really…
QUAERITUR: Is there really a need for a mascot for a Holy Year?
I am not making this up.
“Luce” will also serve as the mascot of the Holy See’s pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.
The Holy See pavilion will also display the 17th-century painting “The Entombment of Christ” by Caravaggio. pic.twitter.com/HkdFuvB7oc
— CatholicTV (@CatholicTV) October 28, 2024
Non-specific sex. Rainbow “rosary”. Staff that looks like a stang.
Named… “Luce” (Loo-chay). Short for …. Luci (something)… maybe? Ohhh… right, it’s Italian. Because that’s what the whole world speaks.
Mental exercise:
You can get this poster anywhere in Rome, any touristy shop. All the Popes.. right?
So, cover your eyes and throw a dart at this poster. Find which pope it hits.
What would THAT pope say about this mascot thing?
It’s just a mental exercise.
Honestly. I don’t understand what they are thinking.
UPDATE: 29 October 2024
More from the same… I’m sensing a theme.
And the 2025 Jubilee logo:
UPDATE: 30 October 2024
And now people are getting the idea… HERE
Translation:
The Vatican entrusts the Jubilee to a gay pride and sex toy designer.
by Andrea Zambrano
Just introduced and already in the storm: the mascot “Luce” for the Jubilee 2025 not only resembles Greta Thunberg, but was created by the designer Simone Legno, very active with his brand “Tokidoki”. And who in his collection has produced gadgets for Gay pride and a line of vibrators. Is it possible that the Dicastery for the Evangelization of Monsignor Fisichella did not know this?
[…]
UPDATE: 30 October 2024
HOWEVER… on my way to church I pass by the Palazzo Spada. On the pavement by the building are potted plants. One of them was moved a while back to reveal an icon – like a mascot figure of pilgrim – from a Jubilee of some years past. I shot a pic of it today, with pigeon feathers and mozziconi. These showed the visitor of Rome which path to follow from pilgrimage place to place.
Hey? What’s with the non non-specific sex suggestion facial hair? What’s with the staff? It doesn’t look like the reverse of a staff to be used in satanic rites! I hardly know what to say! Although… that hat… could be … a… a…
UFO!
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I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the comment of any pope prior to … oh, let’s say 60 or 70 years ago, would be “Anathema sit!”
Luce …. or maybe more like Luc i fer?
Unfathomably lame.
Is the mascot redeemed by what appears to be Rupnik art on its left shoulder?
To think that that thing and a Caravaggio painting are sharing the same space. What a joke! There is no need for a mascot. It is a desperate attempt to be “cool”. That thing reminds me of the anime that my coworkers in their late twenties like. As soon as I saw the first photo, I thought it belonged in Japan. How fitting that is the destination.
Oh, this is so stupid! It reminds me of those memes captioned “Greetings, fellow youth …”
Besides, Holy Church already has a “mascot”. It’s called a crucifix.
Just spitballing here, but has the Vatican heard of saints? Rather than select one or several of them as a patron – or, you know, the Blessed Virgin or Jesus – they went with a fictitious anime character with a problematic name and highly questionable imagery and by an artist who has created scandalous works.
Shades of the Pachamama debacle.
… besides, “within the pop culture …” is the very place our Lord told us not to live.
Why does Justin McLellan on the USCCB website – or his source – call it “wearing a missionary cross”? He also quotes – I take it – Archbishop Salvatore ‘Rino’ Fisichella that the mascot was inspired by the church’s desire “to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth.” ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ Mr. McLellan also writes “Luce’s glowing eyes feature the shape of scallop shells”. Glowing eyes? Assuming the blue bits are the irises and the white reptile-egg ovals at the top are reflections, that makes the the stylized inverted Cthulhu heads the pupils. What a mascot for the Vatican’s Osaka Expo pavilion with its theme “Beauty brings hope”: may we hope that a myriad of (surely biodegradable) Luci with be tastefully ranged around Caravaggio’s “Entombment of Christ”?
I’m 30 and look my age. I’m traveling and went to a nearby parish for Mass this morning. I got there 10 minutes early and was the only person in the chapel. Priest walked in 5 minutes later, and said ‘hi’ to me with a look like he had been stuck on a desert island for several years. He then proceeded to make Mass about how “we don’t know much about Simon and Jude, but we know that they preached Jesus’ message of diversity, equity, and inclusion” (nearly exact quote).
There is something about the combination of age and lack of an interior life which makes the most unproductive and bizarre appeals to youth and cultural relevance…
Operation Tiber 2.0 is a go!
I’m just glad they used a solid Catholic to design it. Not a company who supports and donates to LGBTQ causes.
Whoops, nevermind:
https://x.com/tokidoki/status/1796588728007229459?t=oqtZstbJdRhWRjkR4u4eWg&s=19
Doesn’t get any Gayer than this. Seeing archbishops in pictures with funko pop figurines is a bad look. There was an abuser Priest in Ohio, nasty story, abused a kid etc. Turns out the priest had a funko pop collection in seminary. The bishop said if he had known, he wouldn’t have ordained him. The Priest hung himself when in prison. No straight young boy thinks Archbishop with a gay doll is cool. They think it quite gay and CREEP vibe takes over. Way to lose the men and all sensible youth. If I had a priest try and show my kids a faith mascot I would never let my kids near him again. When I was in high school, I heard that many abortions took place among the student body. Whether true, I didn’t want to know, but I heard the gossip. Think about that! Engaged in pretty grown up behaviour and living with the reality of abortion at 14 years old! Let’s give the youth, gay, immature, effeminate dolls. Pathetic.
Kids need Jesus Christ. Kids who have had abortions, are capable of understanding and needing, Christ crucified.
Sorry, I get really pissed off at how gay things are. I can’t imagine being Fischella and unveiling a blue haired doll to our youth. Pathetic.
A bunch of out-of-touch geezers who think that they know what kids enjoy. They would do literally anything to bring young people into the Church, except allow/promote TLM.
Maybe they should look across St. Peter’s square and count the “under-3o’s” that are in the Summorum Pontificum procession.
Has anyone seen the interview with the African and the gay rights activist? Why are you gay? It’s been watched by millions and quoted by blue collar workers by the millions whenever anything is slightly non straight.
Seeing an archbishop with a doll, the men will ask the same question as was asked in the infamous interview.
It looks like a little soul-less demon-idol.
I am not sure how to take this; however, borrowing a line from a Monty Python movie seems appropriate: “The Vatican!” (silly musical number) “Let’s not go there; ‘tis a silly place!”
During the early part of the 2016 presidential campaigns, probably in the middle of 2015, I was astounded by how out of touch rich republican donors were with rank and file republican voters. (Because they had wasted so much money funding Jeb Bush’s campaign.) It would seem, based on this, that the Vatican is even more out of touch with the spiritual needs of ordinary people. The republicans thought they could buy a nomination, the Vatican thinks it can gimmick someone into converting.
This is the make-work of an overstuffed bureaucracy.
Also… the endless creativity of some people in the post VII Church is just a sign of pride, escapism, and turning away from Christ.
It can’t get much more gayerandretarded than this, but then again they keep outdoing themselves.
These clergy are educated to the “nth” degree and yet they so often behave like juveniles.
I just came across this today, and the more I think of it the more it gives me the creeps. I hate dumbing down the Faith. A picture of an elderly Archbishop with an anime style figurine just sends all the wrong vibes (which have already been listed by others in this thread) and just shows how hopelessly out of touch the Vatican has become during this pontificate. After centuries of magnificent Catholic art, this garbage is what we get as a mascot for a Holy Year, are they out of their minds? An appropriate patron saint seems to be “too Catholic” for this crowd. End of rant.
To answer the question: no, I don’t think the Holy Year needs a mascot, but a patron saint would be appropriate. Neither does it need anything by Rupnik.
The optics in this photo is weird. An elderly cleric and some anime type character???? St Michael, Prince of the Angels, lead us home to glorify the Lord alone.
As a Contractor , I still work in a lot of high end homes. You can’t believe how many times I have seen the picture of the two Cherubs at the bottom of the famous Assumption of Our lady painting. I always tell them about the painting and how they got short changed. I show them the full painting on my phone. If anything, I pray it gets them thinking.
EAW: anything by Rupnik.
Hmmm… notice…. both employ big eyes.
I’ll vote “no,” there is no pressing need for a mascot for a Jubilee Year.
I wonder how many people … bishops, monsignors, priests, nuns, secretaries, Swiss guards, janitors, children … had the chance to veto this decision before they put an elderly cardinal in front of the cameras with yet another stupid, ugly piece of kitsch.
If this ugly plastic doll won the competition, I want to see what came in second place.
1.) Optics are terrible to the point that it should be sufficient probable cause for police to open an abuse investigation.
2.) The weird amalgamation of chibi and funco pop isn’t where the “young people” are.
3.) Luce…I hate how non-Catholic the design is. It is dreadful and communicates nothing.
4.) In contemplating this or Buddy Jesus, Buddy Jesus any day of the week.
Bonus: I really want to thank the Vatican for all the Luce waifus that will show-up in my image feeds. Thanks for that.
@Father Z:
Indeed they do. If I’m not mistaken, the logo on the left shoulder of this… thing is designed by the infamous former Jesuit.
Where to start. Lame, gay idea for a portrayal of a child to represent a year? And by the way hasn’t Francis hit his maximum for jubilee years? Seems like he has them too often. But does the mainstream church not realize some people think the clergy are a little TOO interested in children already, and have a dodgy past regarding them, and that it is a bad look to create little child mascots to represent an entire church, when so many of us are not toddlers. And that leads to mascots. Major league teams have mascots, does the church need them? Who are they looking to recruit, more toddlers? Japanese toddlers?
What’s up with the clamshell eyes, the eyes have double pupils, why on earth double pupils. I’m thinking of the old Precious Moments figurines from the 70’s, these are absolute knockoffs of those. But those were cute. A young guy creates them and they STILL look like a retread from the 70’s, that frozen moment in time for too many churchmen. The pride rosary beads, please. Dirt on the boots, yes, we get the symbolism, oy. You like us dirty and smelly, which is kind of weird when you think of it, and insulting. Poor doesn’t have to mean smelly or dirty. The Tinky Winky logo. It was gay then and gay now. But this is intentional!
It’s all about the stang. Come on, a witch’s stang, just like the young, likely wiccans gave Francis in a symbolic looking procession, which he chose to use and from which perhaps he cast various spells on the assembled. Completely non-Catholic and W-E-I-R-D but…onward we all went, to the next thing. We always do.
Bottom line problem we have too many Catholics who can’t see Francis for what he is, and can’t or won’t recognize the church Rome is creating is nothing like the church we had. Francis has one job. He is not a CEO, his one job is pass along the faith intact to the next generation as is, relying on tradition to do it. If not enough Catholics are willing to admit this is obviously not what he’s doing or what they’re doing, and that Francis brings a totally different gospel, then, we’ll have to wait on God for the remedy. Why did God bother to tell us “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8
Upon further investigation I found that Luce is a “she.” Notice the blue hair. The Left hates blue is for boys and pink is for girls. Years ago I happened upon a children’s television show whose main character was a dog named “Blue”; I waited a moment and, sure enough, it was a she. My three-year-old goddaughter hasn’t got memo. She wants everything pink.
The creator of this thing is tokidoki x If you have the stomach you can find other
“Cute toys” on Amazon.com uk
In answer to your question, Father – no, I think it is entirely unnecessary to have a mascot for the Holy Year. A logo, perhaps, with a faithful and hopeful symbol. But no, not this.
Firstly, the Holy Year is not just for children, tweens, and teens who go in for gimmicks like this. It is also for adults and geezers like me. Speaking for my 63-year-old self, I would be far more inspired and impressed with perhaps a monstrance, or a crucifix – or even an outline of the Basilica of St. Peter – something readily recognizable as Catholic and which unites us all.
Secondly, the children, tweens, teens, and young adults with whom I am regularly in contact at my parish do not like to be patronized or condescended to. I schedule the servers and other liturgical ministers at our Masses, and many of these are also members of the Newman Center which meets at my parish and whose chaplain is my pastor. These young parishioners, who range in age from 8 to 24 or so, take their Faith very seriously. They want to do their duties correctly and with dignity. They also want to know the reasons why we do the things we do – they want logical and understandable apologetics, in other words.
They are all very willing to assist at Mass and they want to understand their Faith. A copy of YouCat or the Catechism of the Catholic Church for every Catholic from 8 to 24 would be very welcome and would be used by the youth of my parish.
These children, teens, and young adults are asking me about serving for Christmas already – and it isn’t even Halloween yet. They are also the very first to offer with working around the parish. We experienced some hateful vandalism to our parish social hall over this past weekend, and they worked over 8 hours cleaning and disinfecting the hall the following day, a Sunday, when they had various other more interesting and fun things to do.
Anyway, Father, that’s my two cents from what I have seen at my parish in Akron, Ohio. We are very blessed with the youth of our parish, and I want them to continue learning and loving their Faith for the rest of their lives. Peace to all here.
I honestly think it is an intentional effort to beclown the church.
Then there’s this….
https://x.com/catholicsat/status/1851347046373945417?s=46
This for a Jubilee year…sigh!
How much longer must we endure this papacy/curia? How long…?
My grandson was playing with his wooden saint dolls yesterday. At one point I noticed he had them all lined up & facing the same direction. I asked him what are they doing? He said they’re talking to God.
Poor Chinese slaves will probably be making these things as Jubilee merch but I don’t think this “mascot ” will inspire similar behavior as my grandson’s.
I want to thank the Vatican for another reason to keep my wallet in my pocket.
Instead I will support organizations that actually spread the Kingdom of God
I saw a comment that said the Church already has a mascot. The crucifix. When a believer or unbeliever sees a crucifix they can know a lot about the place in which it is displayed.
Anyway, there is a strange juxtaposition of the truths about the Church with the anti-Church. We’ve seen recently the chair of Peter displayed and Bergoglio staring it down, then this demonic blue-haired mascot together with “The Entombment of Christ” by Caravaggio. Are they hoping some of that orthodoxy will rub off on their heresies and make them nice and appealing to the faithful? I don’t know, it’s all very odd (desperate). But anyway, God in his mercy has seen fit to fix it to be this way so we must persevere.
What the hell is wrong with these people?? They are aping the Church-
Great optics for a Church with a sex abuse problem they’re still dealing with.
For me this mascot begs the question: do priests become pedophiles or do pedophiles become priests?
A sibling for Luce?:
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2024/10/introducing-newest-jubilee-mascot.html
Thank you Fr. Z. I’m really grateful for this post.
Thought experiment: forget the company the designer works for; forget the Teletubbies and animé associations. Just replace Archbishop Fisichella with another presenter—can you imagine Padre Pio, or Cardinal Newman promoting this thing? How about Benedict of Nursia or René Groupil? If your answer is that such a suggestion misses the context, then I’d suggest that it’s exactly the context that cheapens it, nails it to a frivolous pop culture, and will quickly banish it to the rubbish heap.
The authentic, perfect humility of Christ to be all things to all people has been hollowed out in order to grovel to a shallow aesthetic, devoid of beauty and straining at pedestrian clichés. Our young people deserve better.
Is it significant that the object to be put on display with this pathetic doll is a painting not, say, of the resurrection, but of the burial of Christ? Or am I in my cynical old age crediting our most reverend fathers-in-God with more imagination than is warranted?
Unexpectedly, social media seems to be appropriating Luce in ways the artist and the Vatican probably did not intend (basically taking the anime and removing all the bad symbolism).
It seems to me the generation of the past imagine the entire youth are like their great-great-grandchildren who don’t practice, who’ve never practiced, and have no interest in practicing.
Rather than trying to get in touch with the youth who are entering seminaries, monasteries, and convents, they’re appealing to people who think the church has nothing to offer. I noticed this in the one synod meeting I went to with my friends. We were the youngest by about 70 years and the only men. The upside is it made me realize that this way of thinking will die in my lifetime.
But wait, there’s more! Logo- and/or near-Tubby-ishly, there are the “Friends” with red, green, and blue-ish slickers, Fe, Xin, and Sky – all with those Cthulhu pupils (Xin has orange-and- purple? irises to not go with the pink hair). And a blue-haired Hermetic-baseball-capped winged figure with conventional ring-nimbus, and a cap-and- kerchief? -wearing dog (who somehow reminds me of Amy Thanatogenos).
Luce could be a real fashion trendsetter among the Deaconettes-to-Come. Each dressed in yellow raincoats with Rainbow Rosaries around their necks and a Witchey Stick with which to spank those attempting to kneel for Communion.
I mean, look, if you’re a catholic prelate looking to attract young children, you’re going to try to come up with things that attract young children. This is what we’re dealing with.
I’d like to share today’s piece at TCT on this subject. I think it is excellent.
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/11/10/missed-opportunities/