Last week, the Vatican revealed the official mascot of the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee year: an anime girl named Luce. Jubilee chief organizer Archbishop Rino Fisichella hopes the chibi bible-thumping mascot will assist the church in penetrating the anime community to spread the good word to kids with an affinity for the genre.
Unbeknownst to Fisichella, the Catholic Church created a biblically accurate anime character to help the community skyrocket to the top of power rankings against the medium’s mightiest warriors.
Luce (pronounced “loo-chay”) was created by Italian tokidoki creator Simone Legno. Like her namesake (Italian for “light”), Luce is a quant little blue-haired girl with bright, piercing eyes; she wears a yellow raincoat and muddy galoshes, and carries a staff. Most importantly, Luce is sporting her Jesus piece across her neck to let people know she rocks with Christ.
As with any self-respecting anime character, she’s accompanied by a diverse group of friends who likely have their assortment of visual motifs tied back to the virtues of Catholicism. They aren’t Luce, though. Folks online have taken to depicting her, through the power of God and anime, dominating the medium as a holy warrior.
Be it on X/Twitter or TikTok, anime fans around the world have been hard at work concocting memes and fan art of Luce depicting the holy child—meant to symbolize weathering the storms life deals out to God’s children—as a storm to be reckoned with. In the short period that Luce has existed in the anime zeitgeist, she’s quickly risen to become one of the mightiest anime characters of all time. It turns out that’s not mud on her boots; that’s the blood of her adversaries after she tri-beam blasts them and absolves them of their sins.
In tribute to anime’s new, benevolent overlord, here’s a short list of some of our favorite Luce postings.
#luce #chainsawman pic.twitter.com/g4o7ZANVen
— DeiviD🌐 (@WasabiEraser) November 4, 2024
Stand user Luce
As everyone knows, she is a very powerful stand user! I’m glad everyone likes her! Thanks for watching!🥰🥰🥰#Luce #luce_vatican pic.twitter.com/T0jFNS8wnc— 검은목기린 (@pgr4910) November 3, 2024
Images that precede unfortunate events #Luce #evangelion pic.twitter.com/ORbKB55p8s
— JC Random (@jcporcel) November 1, 2024
Demon：😅#warhammer40000 #DOOM #Luce pic.twitter.com/gNRLAfHk1c
— kai xin (@kai_xin930306) November 3, 2024
It’s hard to argue against the Vatican’s unholy alchemy concocting their anime girl Luce as catnip to the anime community, spreading her pin-sized image as an artistic template across the web like loaves and fishes. However, it’s still too early to tell whether the Catholic Church’s efforts to appeal to an even broader net of people will yield a new generation of believers that will point to her as their entry point to salvation, like so many anime fans before have done with Goku from Dragon Ball Z. Seeing as how blue-haired girls have the worst luck in anime, she’s got a long road ahead of her before she can stand shoulder to shoulder with titans like the VeggieTales.
Update 5.40pm ET: This article has been updated to clarify that Luce is not an artificially generated mascot, but simply an original design from the Vatican. We regret the error.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Trending Products
