Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Vatican Misspells ‘Jesus’ on Pope Francis Medals — Says ‘Lesus’

The Vatican has withdrawn thousands of official papal medals from sale after discovering they had misspelled Jesus’ name.

A Latin inscription around the edge of the medals to mark the first year of Pope Francis’ pontificate referred to “Lesus”.

The medals, produced in gold, silver and bronze by the Italian State Mint, went on sale in official Vatican stores on Oct. 8 but were withdrawn two days later after the error was noticed, the Vatican Publishing House said.

The inscription is Francis’ papal motto, taken from a meditation by the 8th-century English monk the Venerable Bede on a passage of the Gospel in which Jesus calls St. Matthew to be an apostle.

That reads on the Vatican website: “Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum, et quia miserando atque eligendo vidit, ait illi, ‘Sequere me’” or “Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, ‘follow me’”.

Before they were withdrawn, four people purchased medals displaying the error, which could fetch high prices on rare coin markets, Italian media reported.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.