With a recession-pinched Vatican City short of ready cash and looking for ways to get tourists to contribute directly to the restoration of the famed Bernini colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Square, it was only a matter of time before someone thought of t-shirts.
“We were already selling commemorative stamps, but hardly anyone uses stamps anymore, so we decided to try something our target audience would find more practical and could have a little fun with,” said Monsignor Bob Payne, who heads up all fundraising efforts for the Catholic Church that the Pope would rather not know about.
Payne said that after Rome saw how successful t-shirts were in the promotion of the Hard Rock Cafe brand, they thought they’d be a natural for the Vatican, especially because the church’s prohibition against bare shoulders in St. Peter’s Basilica means that visitors are always open to the idea of purchasing a cover-up, and are in no position to haggle over price.
Sales so far have been brisk, the monsignor said, with some of the best-selling ecclesiastically-inspired messages including these:
I rode the Papal bull.
What do you think of these eggs, Benedict?
Who are all these kids, and why do they keep calling me father?
Women should have the right to choose, the Pope.
It’s funnier in Latin.
Pray for beer.
Chastity, poverty, obedience? Where’s the train station?
The Catholic church is cautiously optimistic about the fund-raising potential of the t-shirt program, but wants to move carefully, Payne said.
“You may remember how well our “Wash away your sins with Pope-On-A-Rope” campaign started out and what a disaster that proved,” Payne said.
Although still available commercially, the figure of the Pope molded into a bar of soap that hangs from a string in the bathroom turned out to produce an extremely litigious reaction among people who were uncomfortable with the image of themselves sharing a shower with a cleric.
“We are still in the courts over that one,” Payne said.
Travel humor writer Bob Payne serves as a monsignor at the Vatican on weekends.
Bigstock photo.
