When Pope John Paul II comes to town, followers can sport their pope T-shirts and avoid being late for Mass with their pope watches.
And when that thirst hits from waiting for him with thousands of others, a sip from a pope water bottle should do the trick. Need to call home? Grab a pope phone card.For some, the pope's four-day visit to New Jersey, New York and Maryland in two weeks has more than spiritual value: There's money to be made from merchandising.
"There's not one item here that's tacky," said Robert Villani, president of Robbi Promotional Advertising in Newark, the official licensee selected by the archdioceses of Newark and New York.
Souvenirs, including posters, calendars, books and rosaries, were put on sale Tuesday at a mall here and will be sold at 12 other malls across New Jersey.
The items also will be sold at events in New York and Villani plans to sell them by mail and on cable TV.
Edward Granger of Jersey City stopped by the souvenir booth at the mall to inspect the products.
"I don't have a problem with the merchandising of it. As long as you don't lose sight of the meaning behind it," he said.
The 75-year-old pope originally planned to visit the region last October but was forced to reschedule the trip because of his hip-replacement surgery. He is scheduled to arrive in Newark on Oct. 4 and depart from Baltimore on Oct. 8.
In between he will address the United Nations and celebrate Mass in four dioceses: at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; Aqueduct Raceway in the New York borough of Queens; Manhattan's Central Park; and at Camden Yards baseball stadium in Baltimore.
It will be the first visit by a pope to New Jersey or Baltimore, and the third time a pope has visited New York.
Villani hopes to sell a total of $7.5 million worth of merchandise at the New Jersey and New York events. He lost between $100,000 and $500,000 when the pope's visit was canceled last year, he said.
In Baltimore, the archdiocese is taking a low-key approach.
"We're making sure the retailers get what they want, but we're not backing up a semi to the store," said Bill Blaul, communications director for the archdiocese.
HBI Graphics in Maryland, licensee for the Baltimore Archdiocese, will sell coffee cups, T-shirts and caps with the archdiocese logo but not the pope's picture.
"We just wanted to be very cautious with respect to . . . what items we were going to put the pope's image on," Blaul said.
Villani said he put the pope's likeness on his souvenirs because "Pope John Paul will sell."
His souvenirs run from $4 reflective bookmarks - one with a hologram of a crucifix and the other with a hologram of Jesus' head - to a $125 sterling silver commemorative medallion.
There are watches with the pope's face on them, T-shirts with a sketch of the pope surrounded by New York landmarks and rosary beads with a picture of the pope on an attached pendant.
The New York Archdiocese has approved all 22 products for Villani to sell, but the Newark Archdiocese has only approved 14. The watches, bookmarks and pope phone cards have yet to be approved in New Jersey.
The Newark and New York archdioceses will get about 20 percent of all sales, officials said. The Baltimore Archdiocese would not say how much it expects to make from souvenirs.