Vatican unveils mascot Luce

The Vatican has unveiled the official mascot for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year – “Luce,” which is Italian for “light.”

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s chief organiser for the church’s upcoming jubilee year, said the mascot was “created from the desire to enter into the world of pop culture, so beloved by our young people”.

The mascot will debut this week at the Lucca Comics and Games, Italy’s celebrated convention for all things comics, video games, and fantasy, where the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelisation will host a space dedicated to “Luce and Friends.”

It will be the first time that a Vatican dicastery participates in a comics convention. Fisichella, who serves as the the pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelisation’s section for the new evangelisation, said he hopes taking part in the convention “will allow us to speak to younger generations about the theme of hope, which is more central than ever in the evangelical message.”

Clad in a yellow raincoat, mud-stained boots, and a pilgrim’s cross, Luce’s mission is to guide young pilgrims toward hope and faith with her trusty dog Santino at her side. Shells glimmer in her eyes, recalling the scallop shell of the Camino de Santiago, an emblem of the pilgrimage journey.

Fisichella described Luce’s shining eyes as “a symbol of the hope of the heart.”

Luce, he said, will also be the face of the Holy See’s pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan, where she will represent the Vatican’s pavilion theme, “Beauty Brings Hope,” alongside Caravaggio’s “The Entombment of Christ,” a painting that will be temporarily on loan from the Vatican Museums for the expo.

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

(Agencies; Picture Courtesy: Catholic News Agency)