The Vatican Launched an Anime Mascot and Web Users Wasted No Time in Porn-ifying It

By now, it’s an unfortunate truism that anything on the internet is vulnerable to the whims of the web’s horniest users. That is to say: pretty much anything—especially cartoons—can (and will) be turned into porn, given enough time. This is a memo that the Catholic Church apparently never received, seeing as the Vatican recently launched its own anime character, in an ill-fated attempt to appeal to young people. Of course, the internet wasted no time in smut-ifying it.

Last week, the church announced that it had developed an anime cartoon, Luce, who will serve as the Vatican’s mascot for this year’s Jubilee festival—a special celebration, held infrequently, that is meant to celebrate spiritual growth and transformation. For reference, Luce looks like this:

Luce’s creator, Italian designer Simone Legno, said that he hopes “Luce can represent the sentiments that resonate in the hearts of the younger generations” and that he was inspired by Japanese popular culture to create the cartoon. Archbishop Rino Fisichella told journalists that the mascot was “created from the desire to enter into the world of pop culture, so beloved by our young people.”

Yes, young people sure do love anime. But they also love porn. In what appears to have been a compromise between these two youthful preoccupations, web users have wasted no time in converting the holy cartoon into a dirty fantasy that less resembles an innocent religious avatar and more resembles something sprung from the dirtiest depths of the hentai-verse.

404 Media reports that, mere days after her debut to the world, there are now “dozens of AI-generated hardcore pornographic images” of Luce all over the internet. Those images seem to have mostly been generated via sites like Civitai, a site that allows users to generate AI imagery with the click of a button.

Investigating what’s happened to Luce in the short time she’s been online, 404’s Emanuel Maiberg writes that, on just one website, you can see “Luce nude, covered in semen, and a nude Luce alongside what appears to be a Luce Fleshlight-type sex toy.” Not great. Other pages apparently dedicated themselves to Luce engaging in blowjobs and footjobs. I imagine this isn’t exactly what the church had in mind when it set out on its youth outreach effort.

I wouldn’t expect a 2,000-year-old institution to be super savvy when it comes to navigating the foibles of the digital age, though the Vatican’s digital corps probably should’ve known better.