Last week, the Vatican released the first of its official Pope Leo XIV merch — stamps featuring the face of the new pontiff, a tradition that dates back to 1929.
But while the Church was waiting on divine authorization for its new merch, entrepreneurial Americans wasted no time capitalizing on the election of the first US-born pope.
In the month since, a whole cottage industry has emerged to indulge both the religious set and those who just want in on the zeitgeist.
The deluge of doodads ranges from the standard fare — T-shirts, hats, mugs, candles, and insta-books — to the novel, patriotic, and questionably sacrilegious.
Some standouts:
… is the pontiff’s hometown, Chicago, where retailers and local businesses are hawking papal-inspired cookies and sandwiches and slapping “Da Pope” on just about everything.
Even the White Sox economy is getting a boost from the papal craze.
Americans are a famously patriotic people and ~53m are Catholic, so it makes sense that they’re showing out for the new American icon in true American fashion: by commodifying all that’s holy.
Plus, while many of these trinkets are… silly, as the first American pope, they’re also a piece of history. And we’ll confess, that pizza-pope shirt goes pretty hard.