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Using a mascot misses and obscures the point of the Jubilee Year

The Jubilee, rooted in Scripture and Church practice, proclaims conversion and penance. So why is the Vatican promoting it like the Olympics while using the art of a controversial artist directly linked to immoral, pro-“Pride” products and events?

The Holy Door is the northernmost entrance of Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. It is cemented shut and only opened for Jubilee Years (Image: Wikipedia): right: The official mascot for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year is named “Luce,” which is Italian for “light.” (Credit: Simone Legno / tokidoki/Vatican Media)

A social-media firestorm erupted on October 28 after Archbishop Rino Fisichella unveiled the official mascot—Luce—for the 2025 Jubilee. The female character, which bears the Italian form of the name “Lucy” (or “Lucia”), is depicted in an anime-style format.

The Vatican’s official website of the 2025 Jubilee explains, in part, that “choice of a mascot like Luce is part of a broader context, aimed at reaching new generations and promoting intergenerational dialogue. The mascot not only represents the Jubilee, but is also a symbol of community, of welcome and of sharing.”

Luce’s debut rapidly polarized Catholics online. Supporters touted the character’s supposedly attractive appeal to youth around the world. Detractors underlined that the mascot was, among other things, “out of touch and trying way too hard.” Some critics even tried to connect the figure’s name to the demonic.

However, an important matter has been overshadowed, or even completely lost, in the mascot’s rollout and the cyber-reaction: what are the meaning and goals of Jubilees/Holy Years?

Biblical roots, medieval developments

The Israelites held the original jubilee years. The Lord, through Moses, commanded the ancient Hebrews in Leviticus “to sanctify the fiftieth year” (Lev 25:10-11) and outlined how it would be commemorated—including the forgiveness of debts. The Israelites heeded this commandment from century to century up until the Incarnation of the Son of God.

Nearly thirteen hundred years after Jesus’s Ascension, Pope Boniface VIII revived the concept of jubilee as a means of granting the forgiveness of the temporal punishment due to sins (that is, indulgences).

A depiction of the pontiff’s declaration of the Holy Year in 1300—by famed artist Giotto—sits in an almost-neglected corner of Rome’s cathedral, St. John Lateran. Pope Boniface intended that subsequent jubilee years would occur at the turn of each century.

However, one of his successors, Pope Clement VI (who, ironically, was reigning not in Rome, but in Avignon, France), decreed in 1343 that the biblical precedent of 50 years would become the new norm, starting with the Jubilee of 1350. A later pontiff, Paul II, set the current interval of 25 years between jubilee years with the celebration in 1475.

The Church’s spiritual generosity during Jubilees

The Vatican’s website has an excellent summary of the spiritual aims of Jubilee years (which was compiled during the lead-up to the “Great Jubilee” of 2000): “It is a year of forgiveness of sins and also the punishment due to sin, it is a year of reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation… A Jubilee year is above all the year of Christ, who brings life and grace to humanity.”

The Holy Doors are probably the most famous Jubilee tradition. The pope and designated clerics open these normally sealed doors at the major basilicas of Rome (St. John Lateran, St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, and St. Mary Major). Despite his many ailments in his waning years, John Paul II opened all four holy doors during the first days of the Great Jubilee.

Pilgrims are granted plenary and partial indulgences for visits to one or more of these four great churches, solemnized by their entry through the Holy Doors.

May 2024 document from the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Roman Curia outlines the conditions of obtaining these indulgences. Catholics might be drawn to the centuries-old tradition of traveling to Rome, but through her generosity the Church has extended the indulgences to other holy sites. And not only in the Eternal City but also throughout the world—especially the three great basilicas of the Holy Land and at any minor basilica—something that has precedent back to the Jubilee of 1475.

Does the 2025 Jubilee need a “mascot”?

The longstanding penitential intention of Jubilees/Holy Years—making penances while on the journey to the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul—has opened many graces to devout Catholics. There are so numerous examples of conversions during such pilgrimages (even outside jubilees) of beatified, canonized, and other noteworthy holy men and women in the entries of martyrologies.

Rome and the Church’s patrimony in the Eternal City (as well as the rest of the Catholic world) stand on their own. The Holy Year/Jubilee doesn’t need the gimmick of Luce, which emulates the pop-culture example of Olympic mascots (does anyone even remember any of them a year later?).

The mascot’s debut is also out of touch, particularly in the context of an ongoing sexual abuse scandal. Fr. Marko Rupnik, a cleric whose art is featured around the world (and is still used to this day by the Dicastery for Communication), notably created the logo for the “Year of Mercy” (an “extraordinary jubilee” outside the usual interval) in 2016—which was featured on much of the official material for that special year.

Luce’s creator, Simone Legno, also has a sordid background. He is the founder of a multimillion-dollar company called Tokidoki. An October 29, 2024 article on the Daily Compass website spotlighted that Tokidoki has been “associated with pride month” since 2021: “In a special post on Instagram, Legno wishes ‘Happy pride to all’ and does so with a special graphic of sharp-toothed, rainbow characters with the words ‘love’.” The company’s website has “pride”-themed products, along with “mobile wallpapers celebrating Pride.”

The Daily Compass piece also disclosed something even more crude and immoral—that Legno “also lent his images to a line of [products that are used for self-stimulation, to put it mildly]. These items can also be found on the eBay site, complete with description.”

An honest observer of Legno’s background, along with his collaboration with an arm of the Roman Curia, might ask a pointed question (especially in the wake of Rupnik): why can’t the clerics and laity responsible for communications at the Vatican get it right for once?

Pilgrims will still come to Rome, as they have for centuries. But for the second straight Jubilee, banal art—tainted by deep sexual sin—casts a dark shadow over what is supposed to be a “year of Christ, who brings life and grace to humanity.”


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About Matthew Balan 2 Articles
Matthew Balan is an alumnus of the University of Delaware. He writes for Catholic New Agency and has previously worked at the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, the Media Research Center, Human Life International and the Heritage Foundation.

3 Comments

  1. AB Fisichella seems to be, as one episcopal critic put it: “bereft of Catholic culture.”

    And he’s offering queered-clip-art?

    Is there simply no more artistic imagination existing in Italy?!

  2. “…For the second straight Jubilee, banal art—tainted by deep sexual sin—casts a dark shadow over what is supposed to be a ‘year of Christ, who brings life and grace to humanity.’”

    That astonishing sentence — the last one in the article — is its own commentary.

    Thank you, Mr. Balan and CWR, for alerting us to yet more of the vileness and filth spewed by Bergoglio’s Dark Vatican.

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