Last week, the Vatican unveiled Luce, a Japanese-style cartoon character that will serve as the Catholic Church’s mascot for its upcoming jubilee year, as well as its Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the Vatican’s chief organizer for the jubilee year who presented Luce to the world, said that the mascot was “created from the desire to enter into the world of pop culture, so beloved by our young people”.
I believe his excellency should have considered his desires more carefully, because there is no clearer sign that Luce has indeed entered pop culture and is beloved by young people than the fact that there are now dozens of AI-generated hardcore pornographic images of her on the internet.
On Civitai, a site for sharing custom AI models and generating images, users have created at least a dozen different Luce-themed AI models specifically for generating images of the Vatican’s mascot. These models are not explicitly designed to produce adult content, but as I’ve reported previously Civitai makes it easy to modify AI models and combine them with others that are designed to produce pornographic images, and that is often what users on the site do with any AI models of any character or real person.
Looking at just one model page, Luce – Vatican’s Mascot [PONY], in the section where users share images they’ve created with that model, I can see images of Luce nude, covered in semen, and a nude Luce alongside what appears to be a Luce Fleshlight-type sex toy.
“If you came here for what everyone else came here for, then you won’t be disappointed,” one user said in a comment on the model’s page. “Lord forgive me for what I am about to do,” another user said.
On another model page, Luce (Jubilee 2025), users shared images of Luce blowjobs, foot jobs, and what appears to be an underage Luce crying while sitting on the lap of a priest who is smiling and winking at the camera. The Vatican didn’t say how old the Luce character is, but she seems like a child in official images as well as some of the AI-generated nude images on Civitai, where it’s common for users to create sexually explicit images of young or underage cartoon characters.
According to the Catholic News Agency (CNA), Luce was designed by Simone Legno, the Italian co-founder of the pop culture brand tokidoki. Legno, who said he always loved Japanese pop culture, said he hoped “Luce can represent the sentiments that resonate in the hearts of the younger generations,” according to CNA. “I am extremely grateful to the Dicastery for Evangelization for opening its doors to pop culture as well,” he said.
I am not a Catholic or a Christian but I admit I winced when I saw the Vatican unveiled Luce to the world because like anyone who’s been online long enough I’m familiar with Rule 34. If you wonder if there’s porn of it online there probably is, and surely that is true about an anime inspired female mascot.
Googling “Luce porn” immediately surfaced sites where people are posting what appears to be handmade images of exactly that (click at your own risk), but searching Civitai specifically, a site which makes AI-generating porn of anyone and anything extremely easy, turned up the real motherlode.
