Luce: Vatican Cartoon Mascot for Jubilee 2025

Ahead of Jubilee 2025, the Vatican has launched a cartoon mascot presented on Monday as the cheerful face of the next holy year of the Catholic Church.

The mascot, named Luce, which means “light” in Italian, is intended to attract a younger audience and guide visitors through the holy year.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s main 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 in Lucca Comics and Gamesthe famous Italian convention for everything related to comics, video games and fantasy, where the Vatican Dicastery for Evangelization will host a space dedicated to “Luce and his friends.”

It will be the first time that a Vatican dicastery participates in a comics congress. Bishop Fisichella, who serves as pro-prefect of the new evangelization section of the Dicastery for Evangelization, said he hopes that his participation in the congress “will allow us to speak to the younger generations about the topic of hope, which is more central than never in the evangelical message.”

Luce, dressed in a yellow raincoat, mud-stained boots and a pilgrim cross, has the mission of guiding young pilgrims towards hope and faith, accompanied by her faithful dog Santino. Shells shine in their eyes, reminiscent of the scallop of the Camino de Santiago, an emblem of the pilgrimage.

Speaking at a press conference at the Vatican on October 28, next to a plastic statuette of Luce, Bishop Fisichella described Luce’s bright eyes as “a symbol of the hope of the heart.”

Luce, he said, will also be the face of the Holy See pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, where he will represent the Vatican pavilion’s theme, “Beauty brings hope,” along with The burial of Christ by Caravaggio, a painting that will be temporarily loaned by the Vatican Museums for the exhibition.

Simone Legno, the Italian co-founder of pop culture brand tokidoki, designed Luce and her “pilgrim friends”: Fe, Xin and Sky, each kitted out in brightly colored jackets.

Luce’s yellow sailor raincoat is a nod to both the Vatican flag and traveling through the storms of life. The mascot’s muddy boots represent a long and difficult journey, while its staff symbolizes the pilgrimage towards eternity.

Legno, who admitted to a lifelong love of Japanese pop culture, said he hopes “Luce can represent the feelings that resonate in the hearts of younger generations.”

“I am very grateful to the Dicastery for Evangelization for also opening its doors to pop culture,” he said.

A jubilee is a special holy year of grace and pilgrimage in the Catholic Church. It is usually held once every 25 years, although the Pope may call for extraordinary jubilee years more frequently, as in the case of the 2016 Year of Mercy, or the 2013 Year of Faith.

The Vatican has planned a series of cultural events to accompany the run-up to the jubilee year, including a concert on November 3, Symphony No. 5 of Shostakovich and an art exhibition of painting White Crucifixion by Marc Chagall, which will be on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago to be exhibited at the Museo del Corso in Rome, from November 27 to January 27.

The Jubilee year proper will begin with the opening of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve 2024, welcoming some 30 million pilgrims to Rome when the Holy Year ends on January 6, 2026. .

Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.