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Ghazi Balkiz / NBC News
Souvenirs are displayed at a stand near the Vatican on March 9.
ROME, Italy -- It is a significant event in world history, so what better way to commemorate the choosing of a new pope than with a decorative plate, or maybe a set of prayer cards and matching rosary beads?
While officials at the Vatican began physical preparations for the papal conclave, including the installation on Saturday of the chimney stack from which white smoke will indicate the new pope, Rome’s souvenir industry was also making plans.
Vendors said tens of thousands of ornaments and posters bearing the image of the new pope are expected to be on sale – sometimes within hours of the announcement of his name.
“As soon as the new pope is chosen, our suppliers are ready to go to work straight away – boom, boom, boom, just like that,” explained Rosanna Barone, a sales assistant at one of the shops and stalls that line the Via della Conciliazione, the thoroughfare linking St Peter’s Basilica to the west bank of the River Tiber.
“Some of the things are made in Rome and we can have them quickly,” she said. “For the cards and maybe mugs, things that are easier to make, maybe we will have them the next day or the day after.”
Alabaster figurines, typically made in Italy’s Tuscany region, and items from China will take longer.
Ghazi Balkiz / NBC News
Souvenirs are displayed on a stand on the Via della Concilizione near the Vatican on March 9.
Even for a storied city that attracts tourists year-round, the sheer range of religious keepsakes, icons and trinkets on offer on the Via della Conciliazione and around St Peter’s Square is a remarkable sight.
From crucifixes to cigarette-lighters, key-rings to refrigerator magnets, all manner of items come adorned with the pope’s face or signature.
Among the items on sale on Saturday were a Pope Benedict XVI bottle-opener ($5), an ashtray featuring St Peter’s Basilica ($6.50) and a pair of men’s polyester boxer shorts with an anatomically-enhanced image of Michaelangelo’s Statue of David ($2.50).
At the other end of the scale, pilgrims can choose from table-top nativity scenes ($110), official certificates blessed by the Vatican ($35, plus postage) or a 3-foot ceramic statue of the Virgin Mary ($685).
It’s a serious business both for the small stalls and shops, and the Vatican itself. More than 5 million tourists see inside the Vatican’s grounds and museums every year – almost as many as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Museum tickets and official merchandise sales contributed most of the Vatican City state’s $113 million income in 2011, keeping its accounts in the black: it made a $12.m surplus.
The unexpected abdication of Pope Benedict created a headache, but also an opportunity.
The cardinals will fill out ballots in the Sistine Chapel until all 77 ballots – two-thirds plus one of the cardinal electors – reach a consensus. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
An official set of stamps commemorating the sede vacante – the period during that the church is without a leader – was on sale Saturday for $32.
“That is a big seller, a collector’s item,” said Maria, sales assistant in a store on the Piazza del Papa Pio XII.
Also becoming collector’s items were the Pope Benedict XVI 2014 calendar and the official Vatican Pope Benedict XVI 2013 diary.
Who buys all these items?
“Our biggest customers are Spanish,” said Mario Rosid, 54, who has run a stall in the shadow of the Vatican for almost 25 years.
The most popular items? “Anything with John Paul II,” he said. “He is the most popular.”
That was echoed by Barone, who said rosary beads, key-rings and other keepsakes with John Paul II’s picture outsold those of Benedict XVI ten-fold. Many items feature the name or picture of both the last two popes.
About half the souvenirs are made in Italy, with the rest mostly from China, where factories are expected to begin making items with the face of the next pope as soon as the announcement is made.
Chen Shaojiang, from Tiantai Tantou Huanan Craft Factory, which exports Catholics keepsakes to Europe and the United States, is capable of producing up to 300,000 sets of rosary beads a month. He said it would take up to 25 days to ship new items.
The gap doesn’t worry Rome’s street vendors.
“It’s the Vatican, and people will always come here, whoever is the pope,” said Rosid. “The different name doesn’t matter to people. The pope is the pope is the pope.”
Related:
Will cardinals go off European grid to choose new pope?
Leave a Comment:
I want some pope soap on a rope, and some popecorn and a popesickle please.
What a perfect parallel: people making money off an Institution that exists to make money and consolidate power over the meek and weak of mind...
Tax all Churches to the fullest extent of the code.
I have always thought the Pope Soap on a Rope was quintessential....using a pope figurine to clean your more private parts...Classic.
And that item was sold by the Church originally, officially approved....
marywhatever.......So do I..I tried to get Pope soap on a rope when the pope was in Denver....coundn't make it happen....Can u order online? I'm sure God has a laptop!!!
I remember in the Bible, what did Jesus do with those merchants who setup their vendor?
Remind me again how are Catholic follow the teaching of Jesus?
CuongDNguyen-
Jesus was not against commerce or vendors in general. He was against the corruption of the money changers who essentially were using a Jewish law to turn a profit INSIDE of the temple. It would be as if these vendors were walking the pews during mass at St Peter's. Jewish law prevented the people from bringing ROMAN money into the temple because it had an idol on it, so people were forced to exchange it (often for a loss) for Jewish shekels. If you understood the bible passage you would know that. What these vendors in Rome are doing is simply turning an honest profit. They have goods for sale that people can buy or not at their own discretion. No one forces Catholics on pilgrimage to buy a pope bobble head before they can get into the Vatican. I betting that the kitschy items are sold more often to non-catholics anyway. There is nothing dishonest here any more than there is buying something in the gift shop at a museum or buying a souvenir at a ball game. Just because you don't care for the "product" doesn't make it immoral to sell it.
Never: "Tax all Churches to the fullest extent of the code."
They are. The code says they are to be tax exempt. Oooops, too bad for you.
What is this................MEXICO?
I want the pope bobblehead doll, the pope coffee mug, a pope t-shirt, pope tracksuit and a couple nice pope posters!
Leroy,
You want it We've Got It!
___The Catholic Church___
No member of my family is Catholic or would even consider buying anything that promotes a dead saviour on a Cross. Our Saviour lives and we won't for 1 second promote a cult of Sodomistic tyrants' no matter how big of an embodiement they are. Nor will we ever submit to their wretched ways of destruction, greed and envy.
Obviously, you've never asked a Catholic about it, "chosen". Catholics do believe that Jesus rose - like all other Christians that I'm aware of - but often use the image of Jesus on the cross to remind everyone of the sacrifice. The idea is that the bare cross has a slightly different meaning (more focused on the Resurrection, and therefore the power of God). Both are commonly used by Catholics, though NOT interchangably.
FYI, if you research the historical origins of your own church (assuming it's a non-Orthodox, Christian church), I think you'll find that ultimately, it diverged from the Catholics at some point.
What a perfect parallel: people making money off an Institution that exists to make money and consolidate power over the meek and weak of mind...
Tax all Churches to the fullest extent of the code.
Do you have a stuttering pppproblem?
And every decent person in the world would like to see the pope on a rope!
Now Leroy that's an ignorant comment. It just is.
Whatever Mary!
Marywhatever...the Pope Soap on a Rope was an official product of the Catholic Church, if it is tacky...tell them
How about some of those condoms with the pope's picture on them, filled with "fruit"-flavored ice - I think they are called "cocksickles", or is it "cocksuckles"?
I guess the Queens are getting ready to elect the new "Queen". Old men in silk slippers, fancy headdresses, flowing robes, fancy pinky rings, looks like a Gay Pride parade. Nothing wrong with being gay, just keep your hands off the young boys.
Yeah, but first they have to hold the evening gown competition, but I hope they skip the bathing suit competition...
Forget the "Pope on a rope" - the big seller will be the mechanical "Priest and the Altar Boy"!
Doing the ever-popular "Bunga-Bunga" ritual?
I don't know, but looking at all that junk they are selling rather reminds me of a story about Jesus casting out the moneylenders. Just a thought.......
I just had the exact same thought, Duke.
Ha, thinking the same thing. You know there is probably a betting line in Vegas on who's going to be Pope.
Well that is modern religion for you. Capitalism at its finest or worst perhaps. Then people have trouble understanding why lack of faith is on an increase.
I remember when John Paul came to the USA in the 90's. On each corner in the downtown there were vendors hawking this stuff. It made a lot of folks mad. I can see sending each priest that goes to jail for molesting a child a pope soap on a rope. They would need it.
Sooooooo........ I guess the Conclave will also be considering whose face will look the best on a bobble-head doll?
I'm only buying the Pope bobble-head if it comes with a bent over Choirboy bobble-butt toy...
These trinket sales are really just a symbol of the validity of the whole operation from top to bottom. From the fact there are really no bones buried beneath the Basilica to the bobblehead dolls that don't look a thing like the decrepit old men they supposedly represent.
I find the whole thing very creepy. Especially that there are hundreds of millions who are tied into the See directly and indirectly. Why have so many not advanced beyond this bizarre idol worship? Religion is like a ball and chain on this world. How much human progress has it stifled over the ages? That's an answer we will never precisely know. But surely the answer is an enormous amount, regardless of whether it is easily defined.
The tragedy here is how those involved with the church will never read any of this. (The idea that a God fearing person would ever associate with the likes of us heathens is beyond me.) I long for the day that religion parishes in the flames it has created. Just my opinion.
I learned something new since Ratzinger resigned. The Swiss Guard are the Pope's bodyguards. I now know this arrangement came to be in early in the 16th century, 1506 wiki says. To me this connection played out it's true color in the years leading up to and during WWII. The Swiss bankers and the Vatican stayed "Neutral" during WWII. We know these bankers along with many in the US financed Hitler right up through 1945. We still don't know where all the gold Hitler confiscated from the countries he overtook went. It is certain the Roman Catholic Church invested and profited from WWII as well as did the Swiss Banksters. Google and watch, "Banking with Hitler". It is well proven history that the church and the bankers hated communism. It is also Biblical fact that after Jesus went to parts unknown his followers practices the strictest form of communism possible where everyone gave up all their wealth and personal possessions to the collective group. Infinitely greedy inbred hypocritical ZioNazi pigs should not rule the world, we the people must organize and rule ourselves. World Wide One Person One Vote!
"Made in China" complete with leaded paint, who knows what in the "plaster"mix (asbestos, arsenic, etc.) Ah yes another tribute to enterprise--no it's not free enterprise. The worker bees probaly get $1 a day plus exposure to all kinds of toxic stuff.
Hope they elect a non-pedophile.
Here's a better way to select the new pope! -
Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil, do no evil ?
I hope they still sell wood from Noah's Ark and a piece of wood from the cross that Jesus was killed on. One of those Holy Grails would look nice on the coffee table.
Visited the Vatican about 8 years ago. There's a souvenir shop on the roof of St. Peter's. No joke.
No disrespect, but we bought a bottle opener. We call it 'the popener'.
I'm selling certificates of conversion to my church, you can't afford not to afford them. To alleviate guilt and shame, to avoid confusion, to allay any possibility of hypocrisy, my church has only one commandment: Give me money ! No controversies over covens or conclaves, no voodoo no doo doo, no need to spend on trinkets I am the no hope pope, got cash, give it to me! I can't speak for god but I am really poor.
People making money off something that they're not supposed to be making money from. What was that about Jesus and vendors in the Temple? Oh yeah. His followers always seem to forget that. Pffft. No wonder more people are hating religion.
Sad situation. Think they'll have priest prophylactics?
Is there any truth left in this world,
Yes, try Jesus to find the truth.
Why aren't these child rapist being taxed like everyone else? All they do is prey on the weak minded and hold secrets about how corrupt they are! ALL churches and every religious groups should be TAXED like everyone else. Who cares who the next pope is. When someone dies or gets killed they say god had a plan for them. If that's the case why does the pope ride in a bullet proof vehicle? What about the plan for him? Oh I'm sorry he's special because he wears a robe and lots of gold.
Hope the next pope isn't a pervert!
Roman Catholic Church.........demonic religion!
Next year in Timbuktu!