A battle between God and Mammon has erupted over the Pope's visit to America this week, with Roman Catholic leaders and unauthorised souvenir salesmen vying to cash in.A frenzy of selling has erupted in New York and Washington, where Pope Benedict XVI is due to hold open-air Masses, and on the internet and the nation's airwaves.
Church authorities are fighting to retain a monopoly on what one newspaper last week aptly called the "Mass marketing" of the Pope's visit, the first by a pontiff to the United States for nine years.
Officials at the Archdiocese of Washington urged the city's Metro underground system to scrap a television advertisement featuring a "bobblehead doll" of the Pope, intended to encourage customers to take the train to his mass at Nationals Park baseball stadium on Thursday.
The doll is seen riding on the Metro with a passenger who addresses it in Latin. They were angered not only that the doll was an unauthorised souvenir, available for $12.95 (£6.50), but also that it portrayed the Pope wearing red - he wears only white.
Susan Gibbs, the director of communications for the archdiocese, said: "This was a bad bobblehead. You had unauthorised merchandise and a mis-dressed pope."
The row exposed the competition between "official" merchandise, licensed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Archdiocese of Washington, and more irreverent offerings from independent vendors, all keen to sell to America's 68 million Roman Catholics.
The Beliefnet website, meanwhile, is offering pope-on-a-rope soap and a pope nutcracker, priced at an ungodl y $360. Fred Hass, an internet entrepreneur, is doing a roaring trade in Pope's Cologne, a gentleman's scent (notes of citrus and violet) that he claims is based on a 19th-century recipe devised for Pius IX.
But the Church authorities would prefer to divert the faithful to the official website, popevisit2008.com, where they can buy Pope Benedict rosaries for $19.95, a $30 pope polo shirt or even don a Benedict XVI Event baseball cap for $18.
The Pope is expected to speak on the issue of sex abuse by priests.
He will also address the United Nations and meet President Bush.
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