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.
A 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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I find this mascot’s association with Jubilee Year to be sensationally puerile.
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?!
It’s a far cry from the days of Michelangelo and Carravaggio.
Don’t forget that Michelangelo wasn’t exactly a saint.
…And neither am I, but I like my images to inspire me to that which I aspire.
“…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.
Yes Brineyman, that is exactly it. I have just posted a comment on the symbolism of the mascot yet “the mascot’s phenomenon” boils down to that Last Heresy of the Human Psyche about which I have written on CWR many times.
Its mechanics is very simple: take anything Christ-related: an image, a Synod (a normal synod), a pilgrimage, a jubilee year – anything – and process it through an immature/narcissistic psyche, a psyche uncensored by the relationship with that very Christ, by an awe before the Divine, by the Church’s teaching and by a realization of own unworthiness and the result is an absurd with a blasphemous flavor. Satanists labor trying to desecrate the Holy Host while the Church of Christ is undoing things without even trying to do so.
Anything related to Our Lord being processed through the lens of narcissism (a disorder of emotional development stuck on the level of three years old) becomes such “a mascot”. Imagine this mascot being fashioned by Apostle Peter. Imagine him making a wooden mascot like that and tying it up to his barque. This is what we have now.
The mascot is an image of the New Brave Church. Please see the photo of the actual doll with Archbishop Frichella:
https://x.com/CatholicTV/status/1850904910180532432
I find it to be perfect self-revelation of those who have been laboring over the birth of “the different Church” for some time. I see the mascot as both a Church member and the Church itself who must undergo a transformation if she is to enter in that “different Church”. She (a soul) is given its necessary attributes: a new cloth – a garment with the logo which shows four soulless people doing something with each other/embracing each other from behind; a “rainbowy” rosary; a witchy twig which will aid in travel, and so on. The shell reflected in her eyes represents an endless journey for no other purpose but the journey itself. She will not see anything else but that shell. The dirt on her boots looks very radish hence I read it either as blood or as dung of a strange color – either the New Brave Church is to trample on others or/and to find itself in dung.
Now, when we know the fact that its creator lends his designs to sex-toys it is legitimate to read ‘Luce’ as a sex-toy as well – metaphysical of course. The Bride of Christ must be remade into a tool of self-satisfaction. The anime style was not chosen to appeal to young people; it simply reflects the immature psyche of those who chose it. Think yourself, who in his right mind would choose an anime doll for the Jubilee year in the Church plagued with child sexual abuse? Again, see the photo, how one cannot help but see it through a prism of the scandals. But those people do not see it. They see nothing. It is normal for them to have a rapist as a court’s iconographer or to have an anime doll as an “an official whoever” for the jubilee year. They do not see anything wrong with that.
What we are to do with all that, how we are to exist in the midst of all that is another question.
Yes I thought the doll suggestive of or else unwittingly ‘inviting’ sexual harm.
Luce seems carries either an oversized can-opener or more likely a Wiccan Stang. And, “light” is too easily the theme of the gnostic illuminati. If so, then who needs a crucifix around Luce’s neck when a simple cross seems to work—absent the corpus.
It’s almost as if the welcoming demeanor of the mascot is meant as a childish—not childlike—subliminal suggestion that the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 was not really “backwardist” and doctrinal, but that it was fluidly synodal and “inclusive.”
Not really a Council to discern and then EXCLUDE the nuanced ambiguity of Arianism…. Arianism fatally reducing by one iota the divinity of the incarnate Jesus Christ, and therefore an open door to many more such divine manifestations of all stripes.
That is, Arianism would have reintroduced the pluralism of pre-Christian paganism into the apostolic Catholic Church itself. Something like the superfluous Pachamama being introduced into a niche in St. Peter’s Basilica, under the same roof as the tabernacle and the Real Presence.
But why is yours truly so squinty-eyed about a cute and superfluous mascot? After all, Pachamama was baptized by immersion in the River Tiber—and this by a layman!
Just from looking at the picture of this “mascot,” I suspect that it reflects more the spiritual (im)maturity of its creator and promoters than that of whatever audience it’s aimed at. And who comprises that audience? Four-year-olds? (No offense intended to four-year-olds.)
It is disgraceful to come up with a mascot like this for a time of repentance and conversion. Jesus did not die to be cute and cuddly. How can anyone, much less someone who is non-Catholic take the Church seriously when they see this? The Europeans who run the Vatican in a bubble with no understanding of what is needed in this world, the Good News that Jesus died for our sins and He is the only way to salvation!
It’s just embarrassing. It looks like they hired a teenager to create it.
I believe it’s time for everyone to chill out! The mascot is designed specifically for children, and the various fun activities being introduced aim to engage young people in the concept of pilgrimage etc. Complaining about this initiative is akin to criticizing Catholic coloring books intended for little ones. Instead of dismissing these creative approaches, we should appreciate their potential to inspire and educate the next generation.
And if all we ever show children is cartoon tripe, that is what they will know and appreciate. I’m sure they’d love to live on candy and soda, too, but that doesn’t mean we should let them.
Very true, Leslie. If you look at books & materials for Catholic children of previous era’s you see something entirely different.
At least when they do creepy Nativity displays at St. Peter’s, you can ignore it unless you’re visiting Rome at Christmas. Now this image is another badge of dishonor for a Church telling the world not to take us or any of our God given mandates to witness seriously.
I don’t see the point or need of a mascot for this event, but to pick this image and its creator is beyond my comprehension. Isn’t the Church still trying to explain and deal with the fallout of the Fr. Rupnik fiasco? Why did they open themselves to this blunder? Will they ever get anything straight? 🫣 Even so come Lord Jesus!
Those dark and empty eyes are so reminiscent of the work of Fr. Rupnik. Not even the puppy is cute, but unsettling instead, as is the odd child.
“Why did they open themselves to this blunder”
is not a question that would have occurred to me James. Having accepted that their only Freemasonic Objective is to destroy the Catholic Church, it is logical and normal business as usual.
Without Marcel Lefebvre, how does any of the mess otherwise make sense? We do not have 50 years of blunders but a war against Catholicism waged from the enemies- the wolves- within.
X shows a photo [thanks to Anna our sleuth] of Cdl Fisichella’s groping hand reaching out to the strange little mascot as if to discover what it means for the Church. Fisichella prefect for the New Evangelization section of the Dicastery for Evangelization. How does one interpret?
As remarked before the staff resembles a witch’s stang. Peter Beaulieu perceived a possible can opener of Wicca stang. Again it’s the empty fearful eyes provoking visions of some dark place Luce wants to take us. Does Fisichella envision [apprehensively] a Synodal Church with a Synodal Mass, a place where white becomes black and black white depending on the circumstance? Shall the New Evangelization assure we need not fear, Luce is here to make all things nice?