The Vatican unveils official anime girl mascot

Missed the chance to call her Vati-chan.
- Oh damn, in German, "Vati" is an affectionate form like "daddy", except it's the word stem of "father" ("Vater").
  And wouldn't you know it, Christians also use "Vater" to refer to priests, the pope and their god.
  
  Yes, the US largely figured that out with The Empire Strikes Back. 😜

Lmfao anyone see the movie Dogma, this is modern day Buddy Christ! 😂
- Buddy Jesus would have been an a better choice. The internet fanfiction might have worked for them. I predict they won't be pleased by the fanfiction they're about to get from under age manga.
  
  not...publicly pleased, at any rate...
  but amongst themselves? probably swapping their favorites around.
- Buddy Christ was better
  
  Better than Bloody Christ, for sure.
  The Buddy and Bloody of Christ, though… Now, you’ve got a sacrament going.
- buddy christ wasn't fucking adorable though? I didn't want to pre-order buddy christ???
- Kevin Smith posted on Facebook that this had to be the Catholic Church trolling him for getting back the rights to Dogma and its 29th Anniversary.
  
  🤣
- First thing I thought of also, but I rewatch Dogma regularly.

The Catholic Church has a new mascot.
It's a small child.
- "How do we distract from all the child molestation?"
  "Loli mascot?"
  "Genius, go out and buy a 3d printer so I can get my hands on her ASAP!"
- And you know there will be a ton of rule34 made.... There's just pedos everywhere...
  
  Oh my god yeah.

Because an official anime boy mascot would be too apropos?
- There's more than the one who are (I assume*) boys, also I don't understand what you mean by 'would be too apropos', could you explain?
  
  I assume because I couldn't find much information about the side characters other than their names Fe, Xin, and Sky. All the references on the Wikipedia page just say their names and include the photo at most or don't even acknowledge them at the least.
  
  Young boys especially, but young girls too are probably a little touchy for them to use. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases

Numbers are down, release the waifu! Common business strategy with ancient roots.
- I'd say the mascot is clearly a child, but the Catholic Church...

Are they running so low on young people to molest they've resulted to youthful dolls?
- Pope played Elden Ring and fell head over heels for Ranni
  
  Look, she had 4 arms, a body to kill for, and had a way of getting in your head
- These are useful for luring new victims back to the rectory.
  
  "Hey little girl, would you like to come to my office to read from the old testicles?"

All I hear is, the Vatican is after the young crowd. Imagine that....
- 🌍🧑‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

Think it took 15 seconds before we had this Obvious NSFW https://rule34.xxx/index.php?page=post&s=list&tags=luce_%28vatican%29
- Already trained image LORAs https://civitai.com/models/899944/luce-vatican-mascot
  And the not so family friendly one.. https://civitai.com/models/900249/luce-vaticans-mascot-pony
  
  Already trained image LORAs https://civitai.com/models/899944/luce-vatican-mascot
  Images hidden due to mature content settings
  mother fuckers
- I can't be sure this was the primary use-case that the AI inventors envisioned, but it's hard to argue that it's not successful at this. ¯(ツ)/¯
  
  All technology isn't created for porn, but it is immediately used for it. I'm ~90% sure the Apollo missions were trying to find green chicks to fuck like in Star Trek.
- Guys are always ready to work. r63 next?
  
  Now there is rule 85 version of it.
  
  wtf is r63?
  
  There is already, in the r34 link above.... Ruleception
- OFC, I KNEW IT

Luce? Like Lucifer? Lol.
- Yes; "Luce" is Italian for "Light' and "Lucifer" is Latin for "light bearer". They are cognates.
  
  So whoever carries that anime figure is literally Luciferian.
  
  I thought they spoke Latin in the Vatican, aren't they Latino? Otherwise how do we get such classical Christian idioms like "Romanes eunt domus"?
- "Luz" is an incredibly common name in Spanish speaking countries. It means light. "Luce" means light in Italian, but seems to be less common as a name. Lucifer means "Light-bringer", and the myth of the light-bringer is much, much older than Christianity.
  Old religions thought things in the sky were gods. Venus orbits closer to the sun than the Earth, which means light reflecting from it is extremely bright, but that light is only visible near sunrise and sunset. During the rest of the day the brightness of the sun overwhelms the reflected light from Venus, and during the rest of the night it's not visible because it's near the sun, so it's behind the earth. So, old religions talked about the brightest "god" in the sky, who disappeared when it got too bright or too dark. That led to the myth of the god who tried to be the brightest light and was cast down. That, of course, led to Satan, A.K.A. Lucifer.
  I guess the Catholic church was giving its followers too much credit in their understanding of words.
  
  Satan == Lucifer is wrong though. Those were two concepts that got conflated together, much beyond their original meaning
- Yeah, that was my reaction as well. It's so onion flavored I can't believe it.

Something something "the power of god and anime on my side"

This is the onion-ness we all deserve
- Ahh now I get all the R34 jokes on reddit or/memes today

So they choose Luce, so close to Lucifer, and they expect the Internet to NOT bring it up? There's Lucy, Daughter of the Devil on Cartoon Network for shit's sake.
Nevermind the connections to Death Note, a far more popular anime about Light Yagami, and the subtle connections between his name and Lucifer the Lightbringer.
This seems so much worse on it's face, even if you leave out the undertones of children's abuse by the church and Rule 34 that will come out (which are worse, but the church keeps trying to bury it)
- I know nothing about anime, but I guess it is not that bad? Luce is straight up "light" in Italian, and Lucifer just means "the one who brings light" because it's the Angel's name, before the fall according to the fairytale. So from their POV it should all make sense.
  
  I dunno, he's a serial killer trying to remake the world by looking everyone he doesn't like and it's pretty mainstream.
  Even without that, drawing attention to Light seems weird. Could've been "Peace", "Faith", or "Love" or whatever.
  This is just 12 years of Catholic school talking, but it's a strange name to pick that ties to a lot of less than desirable stuff.
  
  Don't apologize for their systemic pedophilia, et al.
- Luce means light in Italian. Lucifer means "light bringer" and the mythos is about trying to steal the light (luce) of god. It doesn't mean "luce" is bad.
  I guess the Catholic church overestimated the education of its followers.
  
  It's simple word association. I'm aware of the Latin translations. I'm also aware that most people are not going to think about it too long, and immediately going to jump to conclusions. They also believe in Bigfoot. What end of the Bell curve are we talking about, here?

How is this NOT the onion...

Luce will also represent the Holy See at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.
I love this sentence so much.

that's adorable. I like the frog looking one, as my name implies.
- Oh god, I can’t help but see the reflection in their eyes as a hand with way too many fingers
  
  I didn't notice this before reading your comment, but now I can't unsee this

Target demographic: lolicons
- I would say the target demographic is Catholics. That's an important distinction, because it includes shotacons too.

Finally the Catholics have discovered religion!

Looks kinda like that Chickpea comic.
- it looks like if raincoats were hijabs...
  Who are they trying to appeal to with this, are they launching a vatican sponsored cocomelon clone?
  
  The dog shit on their boots is a nice touch.
  
  Designed by tokidoki 😑 what even is this timeline.
  
  They shouldve just asked permission to use Alexander Anderson. My favorite fictional Catholic.
  
  Maybe they are trying to expaind theor Japanese market
  
  In the pocket of the green one - is that a pedobear?

yeah thats gonna clean up their image

No way they're going to regret that decision....
- Don’t worry, the R34 artists are already on it.

Thank god they didn't go furry with any of their characters.
- 2034: The Vatican unveils official furry mascot
  
  Aslan from the Narnia series is basically a feral fan-made fursona for Jesus
  
  To learn more google "Rule 34 Vatican mascot"
  
  Please no. I think I'd have no choice but to firebomb the Vatican.
  Edit: Catholic furries are fine, I don't have anything against them so long as they're not trying to proselytize or something; but I don't want the Catholic church anywhere near me.
- CS Lewis did it for them with Jesus' lionsona

Her name is Light? Like the guy from Death Note?
- What’s Luce for?
  
  For seeing, duh.

Child Rape, Incorporated really shouldn't, they really really shouldn't, they really really really just should not
- but she's ackchyually 2,000 years old

"Ara Ara! Popu-Sensei is so kawaii!" /s Too bad there are so many cases where Catholic anime turns into the darkest type of hentai.

So is it blessed anime, or holy anime?
- Holey*

Don't let this distract you from the fact that the Pope still doesn't have a moe moe

Hmmm.
Are they ignorant to the "art" that will be created inspired by this, or was that their intention?
- They're using childish cartoon characters to attract young children to the church. I don't think they care who does what with the characters as long as they get more kiddies to diddle.

Really surprising it isn't a teenage boy.

If there is an internet rule for every character there is a religion swapped version of that character, I'd like to see Pagan/Wicca versions of them like they have moved out of the bible belt (especially Texas) and into a mostly blue state where they can preserve their freedom of religion from certain religious nutjobs.
- Make one with a gunstaff that's still in Texas plz
  
  hurr durr austin.
  turn that shit blue then we'll talk