The Jubilee is a time of celebration for Catholics.

Traditionally, the Jubilee is held every 25 or 50 years and is a time to celebrate progress, free slaves (back when slaves were legal), forgive sins, etc etc.

In a great celebration, it makes sense to add a bit of pop culture flair. It’s also common to focus on children and youth outreach during the Jubilee and an anime character does a lot for that.

As for Luce herself. The Jubilee is also a time of great pilgrimages. It’s recommended to get your 'once in a lifetime’s visits to Vatican City (or other local holy sites: Santiago de Compostela, Fatima, Guadalupe). As such, Luce is modeled after the image of Pilgrims: Pilgrim staff, raincoat and dirty boots.

Her eyes are of the seashell, a Catholic sign for pilgrims. The seashells guide pilgrims to holy sites (if you’ve ever been on the Camino, all the next locations are marked with Seashells).

I’m expecting that Luce (thanks to the seashell eyes) will count as an official signpost for the next year of pilgrimages. She’s got incredibly well thought out symbology here.

Edit: I should also note that the raincoat has the 2025 Jubilee of Hope flag on it.

In case you didn’t get what that green spot on the raincoat was.

Didn’t believe you when reading this, apparently it is? Character doesn’t look that weird and I’m completely surprised the vatican is modernizing this much

The catholic church has been bleeding members for a while now. This is probably a “fellow kids” attempt to try to get younger people interested again.

It’s a marketing strategy. They have a product and they’re trying to expand into an un/under-exploited market. What the product is just so happened to be religion, which is increasingly unpopular, archaic, restrictive, controlling, and fictional. They have fairly stringent rules and since the anime mascot doesn’t violate them, they’ll try it out and see if there’s any returns.

It’s a pretty low investment, and it’s not even close to the first cartoon character made specifically to try and hook kids to a religion. It’s only noteworthy because the format is slightly different than past efforts.

Archbishop Fisichella also unveiled the official mascot of the Holy Year 2025: “Luce” (Italian for light), a cartoon pilgrim dressed in a yellow raincoat, mud-stained boots, wearing a missionary cross and holding a pilgrim’s staff. Luce’s glowing eyes feature the shape of scallop shells, a traditional symbol of pilgrimage and hope.

The mascot, he said, was inspired by the church’s desire “to live even within the pop culture so beloved by our youth.”

Source :the dialog

Seems they’re trying evangelize the kids and are going to where they are. Gives me Buddy Christ vibes to be honest.

Cuz like every major religion they’re hemorrhaging believers and thus, money. Time to shake up the recruitment protocols.

this is bonkers (hadnt heard of it before) and honestly pretty funny considering that every time “god” in the western sense is used in anime the entity or entities are more often than not villainous monsters.

The rule34 will bring in the gooner demographic for them

Because we need merchandising uwu

Christianity of all denominations is losing followers at a church-worrying rate. Yes, you’ll always get those who are zealous or make it part of their identity and will never quit, and of course, the quiet - if you’ll pardon the pun - masses who are ever faithful, but the churches don’t fill up quite how they used to.

By getting the kids hooked on an ideology through a relatable, maybe even exciting, child-like character, they’re hoping to (eventually) get people back into churches and get business booming again.

He didn’t announce them. They came to us from God. They are here to help us attain a heavenly life.

Because Rule34

To fetch dweeb lords.

The mascot was specifically made to represent the Holy See at a Japanese expo. It’s essentially the Vatican’s government. Merchandise like this has always been a thing, it’s just this is an official endorsement.