Cell Saints

A company in Italy has started selling images of saints for people to carry with them-on their cell phones. From Yahoo News…

“We found a need and filled it,” Barbara Labate, who came up with the idea with her business partner in a cellphone services company based in Milan, told Reuters by telephone.

Many taxis, private cars and trucks in Italy have a small picture of a saint — known as a “santino” or little saint — taped to the dashboard. Millions of Italians also keep wrinkled and worn “santini” in their wallets or handbags.

“We are merely catching up with the times. I think this will appeal to young people as well as grandmothers,” Labate said.

The company started the service with 15 saints on offer and Labate said the hallowed catalogue will grow. The downloading service, done by sending a text message to a phone number, costs three euros ($4.42).

It’s a good idea, right? People like to carry around pictures of saints. Under five bucks so, the company isn’t making a rat-killing off of them. Everyone’s happy, right? Wrong, you liturgically incorrect heathens. Of course not everyone likes the idea. Many leaders in the Catholic Church are not down with cell saints.

“This is in really bad taste,” Bishop Lucio Soravito De Franceschi, a member of the Italian bishops conference committee for doctrinal matters, told the Turin newspaper La Stampa.

“It is a distortion of sacred things … selling ’santini’ for cell phones is horrifying,” he said.

“Horrifying”, he is horrified by saints on cell phones. Actually, he his horrified by the idea of someone profiting on them.

It occurs to me, that I have seen saints for sale a number of times in my life. A little Google search and I found, wall hangings, calendars, pendants, medals, key chains, water bottles, statues and even night lights for the little shavers, all emblazoned with saints. Profiting on this stuff has been around as long as the saints have.

I think that the good Bishop is maybe, a little vexed by technology. Lighten up Lucio.

Hang on Saint Christopher on the passenger side
Open it up tonight the devil can ride
Hang on Saint Christopher now don’t let me go
Get to me Reno got to bring it in low
Put my baby on the flat car
Got to burn down the caboose
Get ‘em all jacked up on whiskey
Then we’ll turn the mad dog loose

From the song “Hang On St. Christopher” by Tom Waits