Luce is the name of the official mascot/logo for Rome’s 2025 Jubilee. A kitschy cartoon pilgrim derived from the cult-of-cute in Japanese comic books and animation, it is the brainchild of the Dicastery for Evangelization. Artificially child-like, Luce signals Vatican surrender to the hegemony of Pop culture. Competing for ratings in an image-saturated culture—one that values spectacle over argument—Mother Church has to entertain the customers. She needs to lighten up, lift her hems a bit, and show a little ankle.

That means renovating the Church’s traditional symbolic system. A cross—the Cross—signals a serious and demanding religious culture. But “Take up your cross and follow me” does not play well on Instagram. British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams gave us a more timely and congenial theme. His “Let Me Entertain You” hit the singles chart in 1997. That is a good enough marker, as dates go, for the birth of Gen Z. , a demographic raised to accept only those religious tenets which do not offend against all things pleasant, painless, and—please God—amusing.

Your mind gets burned with the habits you’ve learned / But we’re the generation that’s got to be heard. / You’re tired of your teachers and your school’s a drag / You’re not going to end up like your mum and dad. / So come on, let me entertain you.

And we’ll have a real good time!

Gen Z, reared in front of a screen, has grown up learning that anything worth knowing can—and probably should—be entertaining. Accordingly, Vatican midwits want everyone under thirty to know that Catholicism can be a fun religion.

Meet Luce, and let the games begin!

I first heard of Luce when a priest friend emailed this clip of Archbishop Salvadore “Rino” Fisichella introducing the figurine version at a Vatican press conference this past October.

 

It arrived with a single remark: “Beyond words!”

Almost true. Still, there are a few things that invite words. Begin with George Weigel’s reminder of Fisichella’s role as a distinguished prelate under previous pontificates.

During his years as professor of fundamental theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella was often cited by American seminarians as their favorite professor—an exponent of dynamic orthodoxy whose engaging classroom style was a blessed relief from the stolid ways of the Roman academy. Later, after Pope John Paul II issued Fides et Ratio(Faith and Reason), the 1998 encyclical that set Voltaire spinning in his grave, the joke in Rome was that, given the text’s likely drafters, the “F” and “R” in Fides and Ratio stood for “Fisichella” and “Ratzinger.” Ordained bishop in 1998 by the great Cardinal Camillo Ruini, John Paul’s Vicar for Rome, Fisichella played a key role in shaping the content of the Great Jubilee of 2000, after which he was an effective rector of the Pontifical Lateran University and an articulate advocate as president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

So what was this distinguished churchman, an able theologian and competent administrator, doing this past October 28, trying to explain at a Vatican press conference why the Jubilee of 2025 needed a mascot named “Luce” (Italian for “light”), which looked as if it had been designed in a sixth-grade art class specializing in cartooning?

Weigel answers his own question by suggesting that Fisichella was “taking one for the team.”

Yes, quite likely. But that in itself is telling. Under more sober team captains, the archbishop upheld the dignity of both Catholic culture and the petrine office. Now, working under a disheveled pontificate, Fisichella plays the loyal courtier by promoting a degraded symbol of institutional substance. Luce is the graphic equivalent of baby talk.

Weigel calls it “dumbed-down Catholicism.” You can also call it “numbed-down.” It deadens capacity for visual beauty and de-sensitizes imagination to the gravity of the Catholic mind.

 

Q: How does a fish rot? A: Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf.

Fisichella is the ranking overseer of the advent of Luce. Let us apply the proverb of a rotting fish to an analogous situation close to home. Think of Mark Zuckerberg’s change of heart after Trump’s landslide win. During the Biden regime, the billionaire piously placed tampons in men’s bathrooms in Meta offices. Now, in deference to the shift in orthodoxy of an incoming regime—new team; new captain— Zuckerberg is removing them. Metanoia!

If Fisichella had excused himself from the cringe-worthy unveiling, might it have cost him a cardinal’s hat? It is hard not to interpret his acquiescence in presenting this puerility as anything but career-consciousness. Calculated self-interest.  Why else would an intelligent man warble about the Church’s desire “to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth”? Without blushing, he said her large, luminous eyes were a symbol of “the hope that is borne in the heart of every pilgrim.”

[No, Your Excellency. Those blind eyes are a successor to the more plausible ones of Geico’s animated lizard. Also influenced by Japanese animation, that gecko mascot helped make Geico a major player among insurance companies. The Vatican took notes.]

Pop culture is a mass-produced, easily consumable product of what Theodor Adorno dubbed “the culture industry.” Mass media distributes its standardized content worldwide. (e.g., McDonald’s golden arches are recognizable around the world. Starbucks built an international empire with its green-and-white logo.) Rome knows the plot. Basically, the archbishop is shilling for a Vatican scheme to gains fans in a global market.

The Dicastery’s initiative ignores the chasm between fandom and faith. Fans are not converts to the Christian understanding of God’s self-revelation in Jesus. They are merely enthusiasts of an image, congregants of a staged role. Groupies. (Think of Swifties, Beyancé’s BeyHive, or the old Beatlemaniacs.)

CBR, formerly Comic Book Resources, offers this perspective:

Much like the American comics that came before it, anime—Japanese animation—has become one of the world’s largest and most popular entertainment industries. Existing within television, film, books, manga [Japanese for comic book], video games, and more, anime has become a global cultural behemoth.

Astro Boy, a widely popular Japanese superhero, is a young robot who tries to pass as a human. Created in 1951 by Japanese cartoonist Osama Tezuka, the comic book character was serialized for TV in the 1960’s and still going.  Finely drawn, Astro Boy earns credit as the progenitor of the anime craze. Luce is a shiny, crude version of Tezuka’s pioneering creation.

 

Popular culture is not folk culture.

Pop culture, indifferent to history, shares in what Czeslaw Milosz, termed a “refusal to remember.” He used the term in 1980 to describe Holocaust denial. It remains an evocative phrase, suited to today’s depreciation of history as irrelevant to currently fashionable narratives. Luce is too vacant—infantile—to convey remembrance of the grace of the Church’s gifts or the purpose of its withholdings.

Pop culture is a corporate phenomenon that relies on venture capital and established marketing techniques. In sum, Rome’s “new evangelization” commissioned a mascot based on marketable comic book imagery. It will boost the Church’s brand by appealing to the target audience in the same manner as Disney Studios.

 

Disney has Mickey Mouse; Looney Tunes has Bugs Bunny. On it goes. Now is time for the Catholic Church to craft a trademark recognizable on social media giants. Evangelism takes its cue from McDonald’s Golden Arches growth strategy.

Simone Legno, creator of Luce.

An Italian graphic designer, Legno is a negligible artist but a first rate entrepreneur. A brilliant promoter of his own trademark via global brands, he was chosen for his marketing savvy, not the quality of his artwork. Stay tuned.