By now, you’ve likely seen the anime depiction of a young, blue-haired girl with a yellow raincoat and mud-splattered green boots, wearing a World Mission rosary and carrying a staff for her pilgrimage travels. Her eyes are lighted by white shells, a nod to the Camino de Santiago. 

This is Luce (“Light”), the mascot for the 2025 Jubilee, with the theme “Pilgrims of Hope.” Luce is meant to engage a younger audience, but has sparked controversy.

While theologians and journalists have discussed the theoretical merits of Luce, artists, both young and old, have expressed their own views in the form of art, as have cultural commentators, from non-Catholics to traditional Massgoers. The internet has been flooded with Luce images from artists: saving babies from abortion clinics, visiting churches, in images with Christ and the Blessed Mother, reading the Bible, (of course) journeying on pilgrimage, and more. What has been these artists’ experience, and how has their art resonated with the young people who make up their audience? 

As Luce art continues to be created and shared, the Register dug into these questions with a variety of artists who have published their own work depicting Luce, as well as Simone Legno, the mascot’s designer. 

 

Luce’s Appeal 

“It just sounded so manufactured to me and inauthentic,” admitted Chris Lewis, the artist behind Catholic art company Baritus, describing his initial impression of the Luce mascot. “I’m just thinking, ‘I don’t know that that’s the best foot forward for Catholicism’ — that large scale, top-down, universal Church. It seemed kind of disconnected to me.” On Oct. 28, he wrote on X: “Catholicism doesn’t need a ‘mascot,’ we have a Cross.” 

It was the overwhelming audience reaction to the Gen-X artist’s hastily penned opinion that caused him to rethink his views. “That did not go over very well with Generation Z on Twitter. I was surprised that anime would be the one thing that went nuclear on my timeline.” 

But Lewis saw this as an opportunity: “In a way, this is great because it’s gotten people talking about art and Catholicism.”

“I actually really love subculture. It’s one of the reasons I started my company, because I traveled a lot in Europe, and I would see a lot of debased, degraded art, out on the streets in big cities throughout the world. It was always done in sticker format, or murals on walls or graffiti, or stuff you see on T-shirts. And it was one of the impetuses for me starting my business, because I wanted to create something that was an authentic expression of Catholicism that people could take out into the street to balance that a little bit — take up a little bit of space in a Catholic way.” The Baritus Etsy store sells vinyl stickers, magnets, T-shirts, posters, prints and holy cards in Lewis’ signature traditional-Gothic-meets-contemporary style. 

In response to follower demand, Lewis posted his first piece depicting Luce, “St. Raphael Guides Luce Through the Dark Wood,” on Nov. 6. The image depicts Luce as a young woman, journeying through a dark wood with the help of St. Raphael the Archangel, who points to a small Marian shrine. In a moody color palette and with strong influence from woodcut art, the image would be at home in a book of children’s fairy tales. “Gen-X meets Gen-Z with fan art,” wrote Lewis in his announcement of the piece on X. The piece ended up being Baritus’ best-performing art piece to date. 

Other artists are following Lewis’ lead.

“My style particularly isn’t anime,” said Sam Estrada, a 35-year-old Catholic illustrator based in Seattle. “But as an anime fan, I would say that this is a great way to evangelize if it’s done properly.” 

Estrada’s encounter with the character has given rise to a comic strip featuring Luce’s adventures titled “Guardian of Luce,” telling the story of Luce from the perspective of her guardian angel. 

“I didn’t see very much art that taught about the faith or catechized people of other faiths about what the Catholics believed. And so I thought, ‘You know, this is a great opportunity for the Luce character to teach others about the Catholic faith ... little bite-sized things where people can learn about the faith using this mascot that the Vatican created.’” A commenter on one of Estrada’s posts about Luce wrote, “‘Let the little children come unto me, do not stop them, for the Kingdom of Heaven was created for such as these’ ... this is the verse I remember every time I see Luce.” 

 

Luce’s Design and Concept

“In Japan, mascots are huge,” observed Patrick Madigan, a 25-year-old Missouri resident who publishes his art to Instagram as @happy_random_art. Mascots, or yuru-kara, are symbolic figures that represent regions, chain stores, restaurants, or even police departments in Japan. “It’s really interesting to me how people don’t understand that type of culture.” 

The Luce mascot was developed by Simone Legno, the creative director of Tokidoki, a lifestyle brand that features a variety of characters in a “kawaii” style (a Japanese word that means “cute” — think Hello Kitty or Pusheen). 

“My vision with Luce was to represent all the pilgrims that will come [to Rome] for the Jubileum,” Legno told the Register in a written interview. “My aspiration was to be able to represent in this little figure all the challenges of a pilgrimage, but also the value of friendship, hope, that a pilgrimage will bring.”

Under the impression that the Vatican sought out Tokidoki, some artists — and some Catholics — questioned the Vatican’s decision to give Legno the commission. “I can see criticism because they used a secular company that does LGBTQ+ stuff,” said Madigan. (Tokidoki has two “pride” items featured on their website: a snapback hat with a rainbow version of their logo and a rainbow character figurine. They also collaborated with an adult toy company in 2017). 

But Legno, a Catholic, described being spontaneously inspired to create the Luce character by an image of the Blessed Mother: “I was working on the Italian mascot for the Italian Pavilion at Expo Osaka 2025. On my desk there is a little figure of Maria that my mother gave me when I was a child. 

“Inspired by rays of light that were in the image, and thinking about the Jubileum 2025, I decided to make a character/mascot for the Holy Year. I decided then to approach the Dicastery for Evangelization with this idea. I presented it to [Archbishop] Rino Fisichella [who] immediately understood the possibility of speaking to the youngsters through this character. I admire the courage to embrace such a challenge, that inevitably exposed him and the Vatican to critics.” 

 

Copyright at Issue

Artists also expressed regrets about the character’s copyright status. On behalf of the Discastery for Evangelization, Lucia Capobianco confirmed to Lewis on Nov. 25 that “the management of the image of the Official Mascot of Jubilee 2025, ‘Luce & Friends’ for commercial purposes is entrusted to the company Tokidoki.” Lewis has received multiple requests to sell prints of his Luce artwork, but seems to be barred from doing so, alongside all the other artists making work based on the Luce character. 

“This is of course, unfortunate,” Lewis wrote on X. “A company with questionable attachments and background is holding the rights to something that the Vatican commissioned for the edification of the universal Church, geared towards the youth. What a mess.”

“The handling of a character on a world scale presents many challenges and hurdles: from the registration of the character to guarantee protection from any misuse, to the management of all the commercial and non-commercial requests. Tokidoki has the structure to handle all this efficiently,” wrote Legno. When asked about putting Luce into the public domain, Legno said that “after the Jubileum, we will surely have a conversation with the dicastery to define the future of the character.” 

 

Luce Teaches About the Faith

“I was raised Christian and because of Luce I was introduced to Catholicism,” said Neneko, a gamer, cosplayer and streamer from Taiwan who cosplayed (dressed up as) Luce at Tokyo Comic Con 2024, in a written interview. “The kindergarten I went to as a child was next to a church, so I would worship and read the Bible as a child.” 

Her Luce cosplay, which has circulated the internet in the form of both pictures and videos, has been met with audience enthusiasm at events in Taiwan and Japan. “I want to use cosplay to make more people want to know about Luce.” 

On Instagram, Estrada’s comic strip featuring the adventures of Luce and her guardian angel has given rise to opportunities for evangelization. “It made them think, wonder about the symbols. ... It’s like a conversation starter, if anything, about what the Church teaches,” the artist said. 

The messages that Estrada receives from his audience, both Catholic and non-Catholic, confirm that his Luce pieces are hitting home: “Like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know we all had guardian angels.’ Or ‘I didn’t know St. Augustine said this about singing, that singing is praying twice.’ It’s just really neat how people are approaching this and learning from it.”

 

Madigan has developed his own episodes of Luce’s story for Instagram. Madigan’s Luce pieces feature his original character, the Rosary Boxer, going on various adventures with Luce. “The Rosary Boxer is supposed to represent the homeless pilgrims. So the Rosary Boxer is kind of like a rugged man. ... Everyone’s saying that the Rosary Boxer is her older brother.” 

 

The art on Madigan’s page is an imaginative set of scenarios in a surprising companionship between Luce and the Rosary Boxer: Luce bandaging the Rosary Boxer’s spiritual injuries and Luce learning the catechism from the Rosary Boxer. “People are really enjoying the Luce stuff,” reported Madigan.

Lewis’ latest composition featuring Luce depicts her at a quiet moment on the pilgrim’s journey, taking in a mural of the Blessed Mother and Jesus emblazoned with the message “Do Whatever He Tells You.”  

“This street mural idea I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while, but I didn’t really know what to do with it because it wouldn’t make sense to put a saint in that mural,” Lewis told the Register. “But when Luce came around, I could just make this a character who’s on pilgrimage, stopping in one of the environments that is exactly the type of thing I was seeing when I went to big cities.”   

In Lewis’ image, Luce pauses, windswept, to look up at the Marian mural. On a telephone pole nearby, stickers of the Jerusalem Cross are prominent, alongside a sticker of Peter’s keys and a sheet with pull-off tabs that reads “Jesus, I trust in You.” In addition to the main mural’s citation of John 2:5, another sticker reads, “The life of man upon earth is a warfare (Job 7:1).” Throughout the image, one sees the normal dilapidated surroundings of an inner-city scene, but to the left of Luce there is the unmistakable silhouette of the archangel Raphael’s shadow.

“There’s a lot of freedom [in the character of Luce],” said Lewis. “I have many other ideas, actually, for Luce.”