I love Luce — the official Catholic anime girl mascot

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Little Luce the Catholic anime girl is causing big waves online

As it was foretold: There's a new kawaii anime girl in town — and she's Catholic.

Meet Luce (pronounced the Italian way, with a "ch"). Her name means light and she's on a pilgrimage, which you can tell from her pilgrim's staff and muddy boots. My favourite detail are the scallop shell patterns in her eyes, which are associated with the Camino de Santiago, one of the great Christian pilgrimages of the world.

Luce was unveiled by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who described her as part of the Vatican's goal to live within "the pop culture so beloved by our youth". She'll debut in Italy at the Lucca Comics and Games convention, where the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization will have a stall for the first time.

A few days ago Luce was only covered by Catholic news agencies and this discourse was limited to Catholic Twitter/X. But now she's broken into the internet-at-large. Vice, Forbes, Polygon, you name it, they're all talking about Luce, most calling her an official anime girl mascot of the Vatican. She even has a Know Your Meme page.

Technically Luce is not the official mascot of the Vatican itself, but rather the mascot for the Jubilee 2025 year, which is a regular Catholic festival of forgiveness of sins and debts. She will also serve as the face of the Vatican's pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka Japan.

Luce is a creation of tokidoki, an Italian design firm founded by Simone Legno, who draws major inspiration from Japanese pop culture.

From the tokidoki Wikipedia entry:

tokidoki also has multiple business projects and collaborations with global brands such as Hello Kitty, Bearbrick, Barbie, Marvel, Nissan, Sephora, and The Holy See.

Archbishop Fisichella's comment about engaging young people came across as a bit "How do you do, fellow kids" to me, but it really does seem to have worked. The kids love Luce and are making fan art and memes about her and someone even dressed as her for Halloween.

But as you might imagine, based Catholics on X are predictably being very normal about this because tokidoki is a company that "promotes Pride month" and "Luce" comes from the same root word as "Lucifer". Ok.

To be clear: I LOVE Luce and if you are mean to her or make Rule 34 art of her (don't search that) I will FIGHT YOU. With my fists. I hope her brand is strong enough that she endures past the 2025 Jubilee and becomes part of the great array of Catholic art from across the ages.

This isn't the Vatican's first foray into Japanese-inflected pop culture. Don't forget the anime adaptation of the Old Testament from the early 90s or when the Pope was gifted a custom anime coat and then wore it while visiting Japan. (Thank you to Andrew for reminding me of these).

Thanks also to the avalanche of people who all sent me messages about this within hours of it being unveiled by the Archbishop.

Becoming an angel

Here's David Henrie from Wizards of Waverly Place talking about when he and his wife and Selena Gomez met the Pope

This isn't funny, except that it's kind of funny to me that Selena Gomez met the Pope. Click through to watch the video. Ever since I started saving links to religious Reels on Insta its all it ever serves me now. So expect to see much more like this I guess.

I have been busy!

I’ve been on the radio a bit. Last week I took the reins of the Religion and Ethics Report on Radio National.

I spoke with Jack Jenkins from RNS about the Mormon vote in Arizona, plus Islamic scholar Sayed Ammar Nakshawani about inter– and intra-religious cooperation in the peace movement in response to ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Lastly I spoke to Gina Snodgrass from Baptist World Aid about buying ethical fashion in the cost of living crisis.

The Mormon votes story struck a chord with my colleagues elsewhere at the ABC, so Tegan Taylor asked me to summarise it for Quick Smart, which came out today.

Obviously you should go read Jack’s story which kicked off this flurry of activity and curiosity all the way over here in Australia. Thank you Jack!

Do you think she'll play Hot To Go

My "exotic chair is not satanic" sign has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my sign

Agatha All Along gets it right?

God I love Halloween — there's always so many interesting religion culture pieces published around this time. I was fascinated to read this piece in Religion News Service that claims that the latest Marvel TV series on Disney+ has gone down very well with real, modern witches.

From RNS:

[Opal Luna, a witch, author and crafter in Florida says, ] “The people that wrote this have to have a background in paganism, witchcraft or something" ... The characters are “not all typical Halloween witches.”

Inspired by the show, Luna plans to include its theme song, “The Ballad of the Witches Road,” in her rituals celebrating this year’s Samhain, a pagan holiday honoring the dead that is celebrated between Oct. 31 and Nov. 7. Luna believes it will become a pagan staple for years to come.

It makes me think of the Soul Search episode I made about "invented religions," which included a discussion about Chaos Magic and how it draws symbols and practices directly from pop culture.

Other Marvel series have highlighted more complex relationships between the superhero characters and the religions that inspired them. Back in 2021 (when this newsletter was called "Throwaway Relics!") I wrote about Marvel's Loki series, and how the comic book character may have influenced the practice of modern Heathens.

Drama at the crystal shop

Click through to watch the video.

It's Halloween obviously, but did you know it’s also Diwali?

As the dead walk the earth in one part of the world, people are celebrating the victory of good over evil in another with bright lights. Or as Religion News Service says, it's Diwaloween!

That's a video btw. Diwali lasts a few more days into November. A lot of my neighbours go all out with the lights and they stay up all through Christmas too. It’s great.

Who won tho

And what about the evangelical hotties?

I'm making a playlist

The end of Spooky Season heralds the beginning of Silly Season — Diwali, Christmas, Hanukkah, etc. It's a good time to have a good time. So, this year for Advent I'm putting together a Spotify playlist about the apocalypse and I need your help.

The playlist stump is here. If you have any songs about death, the end of the world and the culmination of all things, please drop it in the comments of this post or respond to this email. They could be hymns, pop songs or anything else. The important thing is they are eschatological in some way.

Until next time, have a good one!