What Might It Be Like to Have Lucy, Not Luce, as a Mascot?

No reader here needs to be reminded of the Holy See’s decision to commission and propagate the fictional mascot “Luce” as a symbol for the 2025 Holy Year. Concerns about its suitability were raised across a broad spectrum. I wrote about Luce on my Substack (here); so did Kevin Tierney and Miss Margaret Andrews. Indeed, the grand doyen of the John Paul II era, George Weigel, recently described Luce as “the mascot of dumbed-down Catholicism.”

Well, I’m certainly not going to rehash any of that today.

Instead, I’d like to share a different kind of artistic solution. A Facebook friend had asked his daughter, an art student at the University of Dallas, to create sketches of Saint Lucy, crafted in a manga style. This depiction of a real saint whose life and martyrdom offer a powerful witness of faith connects modern aesthetics with authentic Catholic spirituality. 

I think we can safely say this presents a more grounded and inspiring symbol for the Jubilee. In Saint Lucy, we celebrate a true Catholic heroine and exemplar, keeping the Jubilee’s sacred essence intact. This rendering offers a meaningful alternative to Luce, resonating with a contemporary audience while honoring our tradition.

Why did something like this never occur to anyone at the Vatican?

The artist’s name is Isabelle Velasco; our thanks to her for allowing us to share her work.

Editor’s note: there is also a particular historical reason why St Lucy would make an excellent patron for pilgrims, namely, that she was a pilgrim herself. As I have noted before, the written accounts of her life are universally recognized to be unreliable, in no small part because of the very notable inconsistencies between the different versions. For example, the Roman breviary makes no mention of the common story that she was blinded during her sufferings, and for the sake of which she is often depicted holding her eyes on a plate. But one of the stories about her which is consistently reported is that she made a pilgrimage from her native city of Syracuse in Sicily to the tomb of St Agatha in Catania, in order to pray for the healing of her mother. This story is referred to more than once in the texts for her Divine Office, as e.g. in the first antiphon of Lauds: “As Saint Lucy was praying, the blessed Agatha appeared to her, and consoled the handmaid of Christ.”

St Agatha appearing to St Lucy, 1410, by the Venetian painter Jacobello del Fiore (1370 ca. - 1439). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.   

Of course, pilgrimages were part of the Christian religion from the beginning, and we know for certain that people were coming to Rome (just to give one example) to visit the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul well before St Lucy died in the persecution of Diocletian, ca. 304 A.D. Nevertheless, hers is one of the earliest examples of a Saint making a pilgrimage to the tomb of another Saint, so may she protect all the pilgrims who will come to Rome in the upcoming Jubilee year.