Blogs

From faith to farce: Vatican mascot ‘Luce’ becomes cryptocurrency gamble, meme sensation

The Vatican's official Jubilee Year mascot 'Luce' has become a full-blown internet phenomenon, complete with sacrilegious memes and – get this – a meme coin. Also, a jewelry company is using human embryos created through IVF to make pendants and rings.
Featured Image

John-Henry
Westen
John-Henry Westen
Comments 
16

(LifeSiteNews) — Welcome to The John-Henry Westen Show, where we bring you the truth the mainstream media won’t touch. And today, my friends, we have two stories so bizarre, so downright surreal, that you’d think they were satire – except they’re not.

First up, we are talking about the Vatican’s official Jubilee Year mascot, which has now spiraled into a full-blown internet phenomenon, complete with sacrilegious memes and – get this – a meme coin. Yes, you heard that right. A Vatican mascot cryptocurrency. And next, there is now a jewelry company putting human embryos created through IVF into pendants and rings to wear.

So what are we looking at here? This is Pope Francis holding the Eucharist up at consecration, with the image doctored to remove the Body of Christ and replace it with the Vatican’s official Jubilee mascot. This is sacrilege!

It’s outrageous, but it is everywhere on social media, and it stems from the Vatican’s choice of mascot designer Simone Legno, whose anti-Catholic record was plain for all to see before he was selected for this role. His company Tokidoki has previously endorsed “LGBT pride,” selling “pride”-themed merchandise such as digital wallpapers, “art,” and hats on its website.

Believe it or not, this is the official mascot for the 2025 Jubilee Year, an anime-type figure complete with it’s typical immodesty.

The Vatican unveiled it with much fanfare, perhaps expecting it to be a charming symbol of faith and unity.  Here is Archbishop Rino Fisichella holding up the mascot:

Archbishop Fisichella with 2025 Jubilee mascot ‘Luce’

But the mascot is now totally out of control, and I was alerted to it by Italian reporter Dr. Andre Cionci. There has been a meme explosion on social media explosion twisting the already-controversial mascot into every sort of sacrilegious and irreverent interpretation you can imagine.

Just look at this! The mascot has been photoshopped into everything from Freemasonic symbolism to bizarre transhumanist mock-ups. And honestly, the Vatican has no one but itself to blame. When you replace reverence with commercialism and sacred beauty with childish gimmicks, you invite mockery. And now, incredibly, this thing has gone so viral that people have actually turned it into a cryptocurrency – a meme coin!

There is now an actual cryptocurrency named after the Vatican mascot. And there is sacrilegious promotion, too. Watch this:

This is the natural consequence of treating sacred things like corporate branding. The Church’s leaders have been trying to be relevant, hip, and marketable instead of being shepherds of souls. And what’s the result? The world isn’t taking them more seriously – they’re laughing at them.

The official mascot is up all over the place on churches and stadiums. But all over social media this mascot has become a joke, and worse than that, it’s becoming an instrument of sacrilege. As you can see with these examples:

The Vatican had every opportunity to commission something reverent, something that would inspire souls and elevate the faithful. Instead, they chose an artist whose work undermines the very foundations of Catholic teaching. And now the faithful are left to watch as this Jubilee mascot is twisted into a tool for internet mockery, all while its creator continues to push an agenda at odds with Church teaching.

The faithful do not need cartoon mascots. We need the truth. We need reverence. We need the sacred. The Vatican must return to its true mission: saving souls, not selling out to pop culture. Until that happens, we must continue to be voices crying out in the wilderness, calling for the restoration of true Catholicism.

And as we have seen so often, secular culture is downstream from the Church, and when the Church’s leadership loses it, secular culture follows – but at an accelerated pace of evil.

LifeSite reporter Calvin Freiburger covered the story of a specialty jeweler that offers to incorporate organic tissue, including frozen embryos, into its products.

Blossom Keepsake says on its official website that it specializes in keepsakes “using unused IVF embryos that are destined to be destroyed” to “provide families with a way to honour and cherish the journey they have taken to bring life into the world.”

The company purports to “believe that every life is precious and deserves to be celebrated,” which is why it “carefully handles each embryo with the utmost care and respect. Using advanced techniques, we are able to encapsulate the essence of life within stunning jewelry pieces. From delicate pendants to intricate rings, each keepsake is meticulously crafted to reflect the beauty and significance of the journey it represents.” 

Rather than allowing these tiny human beings to live, or even giving them the dignity of a proper burial, this company encourages parents to encase their remains in jewelry – to wear them as trinkets. It is dehumanization at its worst.

The very fact that society has reached a point where human embryos – children in their earliest stages of life – are being turned into jewelry is an indictment of how far we’ve strayed from moral sanity. The Church has always been clear: human life begins at conception. Every embryo is a person. Freezing, discarding, or repurposing them like raw materials for personal adornment is a horrifying rejection of their God-given dignity.

The whole process of IVF is contrary to God’s will, in addition to being deadly for the vast majority of babies it creates.

God has a plan for conception, and that is the right of each child to be conceived in the loving union of a husband and wife.

My dear fellow Christians, we must continue to stand firm in defending the dignity of all human life, from conception to natural death. This grotesque practice of IVF must be condemned, and we must pray for a return to a culture that values life, not commodifies it.

Thank you for watching. And may God bless you.

The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.

It is also available in audio format on platforms such as Spotify, Soundcloud, and Acast. We are awaiting approval for iTunes and Google Play as well. To subscribe to the audio version on various channels, visit the Acast webpage here.

We’ve created a special email list for the show so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode. Please sign up now by clicking here. You can also subscribe to the YouTube channel, and you’ll be notified by YouTube when there is new content.

You can send me feedback, or ideas for show topics by emailing [email protected].

Featured Image

John-Henry is the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com. He and his wife Dianne have eight children and they live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada.

He has spoken at conferences and retreats, and appeared on radio and television throughout the world. John-Henry founded the Rome Life Forum, an annual strategy meeting for life, faith and family leaders worldwide. He is a board member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family. He is a consultant to Canada’s largest pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition, and serves on the executive of the Ontario branch of the organization. He has run three times for political office in the province of Ontario representing the Family Coalition Party.

John-Henry earned an MA from the University of Toronto in School and Child Clinical Psychology and an Honours BA from York University in Psychology.

16 Comments

    Loading...