At this point, you may have seen the Vatican’s recently unveiled mascot for the 2025 Jubilee Year. She’s a brightly colored anime figurine in a yellow rain jacket with sky blue hair and colored rosary beads around her neck. She looks like a kid’s toy and her name is Luce. 

She’s been the object of so much controversy since the Vatican unveiled her earlier this week at a press conference that she’s just about eclipsed the fact that the Synod on Synodality is finally over (for now). The idea is that Luce will symbolize faith and hope (especially for young Catholics) during the coming year and that she will reach “new generations and [promote] intergenerational dialogue.” 

NO https://t.co/zWSGpteULx
— Become A Saint (@BeSaintly) October 28, 2024

To be perfectly fair to the bright-eyed bouncy anime mascot and her friends, a lot of thought clearly went into her design. The shells in her eyes are supposed to be reminiscent of the scallop shell used to denote pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago and the rosary around her neck is Fulton Sheen’s Mission Rosary. 
If what inspires the modern world to pursue holiness is pop art and anime, that’s unfortunate, but so be it.
That all said, there are, of course, a variety of problems with Luce. The use of an anime-style mascot, indeed the use of a mascot at all, infantilizes religion — not to mention, it’s hardly the art we should expect from the Church that inspired Michelangelo and Rafael. Ignoring all that, the illustrator commissioned to do the work is widely known for his work on gay pride art and sex toys. 
Catholic Vote reported that Simone Legno, the Italian illustrator the Vatican hired to design Luce, is also the artist behind the Tokidoki brand and his work has been connected “to gay pride events and a line of adult-themed sexual products.”
It’s not totally clear that Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the ecclesiastic in charge of organizing the Jubilee, was aware of Legno’s past work — Legno is a bit more famous for his colla...