Newly elected Pope Benedict XVI may have trouble checking his e-mail, as people are quickly snatching up e-mail addresses and URLs in the pope’s name, reports the BBC News website. In an act of generoisty, the New Statesman has offered the new pope his very own New Statesman e-mail acount, should he want it. After reading this week’s Leader, however, we doubt the pope will be keen on associating himself with the magazine.
The race to cash in on the papal election gained attention when Vincent Flood, 27, a journalism student from Dublin, put popebenedictxvi@hotmail.it up for sale on the online auction website eBay.com. Flood, who is a non-practising Catholic studying in London, said he just did it for a laugh. “I wasn’t really thinking about it. I definitely wasn’t sitting by my computer waiting for the announcement,” he said. The current high bid for his auction item is £80.
Flood is not the only one trying to make money off of the pope’s name. A Canadian seller is asking $100,000 for popebenedictxvi.com, and another eBay listing is offering two for the price of one - popebenedictxvi@catholicemail.com with popebenedictXVI@usa.net at a starting bid of $4.99. Popebenedict.de, popebenedict16th.de, and www.popebenedict-16.com are also up for sale.
Tuesday’s election of the new pope has also seen a slew of memorabilia put up for sale on eBay, reports cnn.com. EBay already has at least 68 items up for sale, including fridge magnets, prayer cards and clocks bearing the likeness of Pope Benedict XVI. One seller is asking $2,499 for an autographed photo of Ratzinger taken in 1978.
“It was almost immediate that we started to see Pope Benedict items and memorabilia come onto the site,” said Hani Durzy, a spokesman for eBay, which is located in San Jose, California. “Right now, much of the world’s attention is on Pope Benedict and so it is not a surprise for us to see numerous Pope Benedict listings on the site.”