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Wal-Mart Buys Naming Rights to Vatican Cathedral
Aug 4 2003 by Allen Voivod
The Vatican announced today that it would sell stadium-style naming rights for Saint Peter's Basilica to Wal-Mart for a reported $73 million over ten years.
In addition, the courtyard of the Wal-Mart Basilica will be converted to a soccer stadium for a new Vatican City soccer team, the Holy Seebees. The move is another in a series of stratagems by the Vatican to make up for the $15 million budget deficit incurred in 2002, the 25th year it has run a deficit since 1969.
"His Holiness Pope John Paul II will make a pilgrimage to Bentonville, Arkansas later this year and celebrate a mass inside the Wal-Mart Visitor Center," Vatican spokesman Cardinal Giovanni Colonna said at a press conference. He will be welcomed there by Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, who promised to "ride right beside the Pope in that little old Popemobile of his, all through the town, and I'll give him a real cowboy hat to wear, instead of that ten-gallon dunce cap."
In addition to the Wal-Mart deal, the Vatican is negotiating a variety of licensing and co-branding contracts with multinational corporations. The most controversial of these, perhaps, is the Nike "Air Christus Rex" basketball shoe, scheduled to hit shelves in 2004. The Vatican has been interviewing NBA stars for a potential endorsement deal, and Kobe Bryant is rumored to be a favorite. "Though many of these players have sex outside of wedlock," Colonna noted, "at least they don't use birth control, so that's a big plus for us."
When asked whether God would approve of these financial ventures, an irritated Colonna responded, "God hasn't said anything about keeping our hands off the altar boys, either. What's your point?"
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