Vatican City, Oct 28, 2024 / 12:55 pm
Ahead of the 2025 Jubilee, the Vatican has launched a cartoon mascot unveiled Monday as the cheerful face of the Catholic Church’s upcoming holy year.
The mascot, named Luce — which means “light” in Italian — is intended to engage a younger audience and guide visitors through the holy year.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s chief organizer for the jubilee, described the mascot as part of the Vatican’s goal to engage with “the pop culture so beloved by our young people.”
The mascot will debut this week at the Lucca Comics and Games, Italy’s celebrated convention for all things comics, video games, and fantasy, where the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization will host a space dedicated to “Luce and Friends.”
It will be the first time that a Vatican dicastery participates in a comics convention. Fisichella, who serves as the the pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization’s section for the new evangelization, said he hopes taking part in the convention “will allow us to speak to younger generations about the theme of hope, which is more central than ever in the evangelical message.”
Clad in a yellow raincoat, mud-stained boots, and a pilgrim’s cross, Luce’s mission is to guide young pilgrims toward hope and faith with her trusty dog Santino at her side. Shells glimmer in her eyes, recalling the scallop shell of the Camino de Santiago, an emblem of the pilgrimage journey.
Speaking at a Vatican press conference on Oct. 28 next to a plastic figurine of Luce, Fisichella described Luce’s shining eyes as “a symbol of the hope of the heart.”
Luce, he said, will also be the face of the Holy See’s pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, where she will represent the Vatican’s pavilion theme, “Beauty Brings Hope,” alongside Caravaggio’s “The Entombment of Christ,” a painting that will be temporarily on loan from the Vatican Museums for the expo.
Simone Legno, the Italian co-founder of the pop culture brand tokidoki, designed Luce and her “pilgrim friends” — Fe, Xin, and Sky, each outfitted in brightly colored jackets.
Luce’s yellow sailor’s raincoat is a nod to both the Vatican flag and to journeying through life’s storms. The mascot’s muddy boots represent a long and difficult journey, while her staff symbolizes the pilgrimage toward eternity.
Legno, who admitted a lifelong love for Japanese pop culture, said he hopes that “Luce can represent the sentiments that resonate in the hearts of the younger generations.”
“I am extremely grateful to the Dicastery for Evangelization for opening its doors to pop culture as well,” he said.
A jubilee is a special holy year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. It typically takes place once every 25 years, though the pope can call for extraordinary jubilee years more often, such as in the case of the 2016 Year of Mercy or the 2013 Year of Faith.
The Vatican has planned a range of cultural events to accompany the lead-up to the jubilee year, including a concert on Nov. 3 of Shostakovich’s “Symphony No. 5” and an art exhibit of Marc Chagall’s “White Crucifixion” painting, which will be on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago to be displayed in Rome’s Museo del Corso from Nov. 27 to Jan. 27.
The jubilee year itself will begin with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve 2024, welcoming an anticipated 30 million pilgrims into Rome by the time the Holy Year ends on Jan. 6, 2026.
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