Pope spam

Today the Pope has sent a message to the people of Great Britain. You can read the full text here and the Church Mouse has posted about it on his blog.

However, this morning I also received another message related to the Pope’s visit. The message popped into my office inbox and informed me:

Within 2 weeks from now the Holy Father will visit the UK! Looking forward intently to these historic days? Extraordinary and affordable bespoke religious articles will help you to commemorate the Pope’s visit and to enhance your living faith and devotion. Go to the official UK Papal Visit on-line store to order your bespoke religious gifts and rosaries.

A quick glance at the items on offer didn’t exactly entice me; I don’t want a cup with Cardinal Newman’s mug on it, nor an essential, yet bespoke, handmade, glass rosary and I’m not really in the market for a ‘hot items’ spiritual bracelet.

I was intrigued to discover that my work colleagues had also received this message from Stadelmaier Italia purporting to be the ‘official merchandise exclusive supplier’ for the Pope’s visit. Now this email was unsolicited, sent to multiple recipients pushing commercial products and by any reasonable definition therefore qualifies as spam. So I’m afraid it now resides in my junk e-mail folder alongside other emails offering me the delights of viagra, dodgy financial schemes and other products promising to improve my performance. I’m not really sure that’s the company the Pope wants to keep but then I remember Jesus did spend his time amongst dodgy tax collectors and sinners.