Pope’s Visit Funding Problem – 8 October 2010

pope-shirt-source:telegraph You may remember that back last month, the Pope came to visit the UK. If you want to jog your mind, here’s the blog I ran on it. Something which people were less aware of were the ‘football shirts’ made for the event. The idea of them was to help fund the visit to the UK, and they were made by shirt suppliers ‘4 Club and Country’.

So, how many were made? 1,000? 2,000, maybe? No – 20,000. Each shirt cost £18, and they were due to make a total of £360,000 (with £50,000 of that going to the Catholic church).

However, not quite all of them sold. I say “not quite all of them”… They sold just 520 of them. That means they only grossed £9,360.

Paul Sullivan, managing director of 4 Club and Country, blamed negative publicity prior to the visit.

“The Pope won the public over towards the end of his visit but there was hostility and indifference in the early stages and that hit our sales.”

Paul Sullivan (of 4 Club and Country shirt suppliers), 8 October 2010

So what now for the remaining 18,500 shirts? They’re due to be rebranded ready for the Pope’s visit to Spain.

The company say that they will still give some of their takings to the church.

Andrew Burdett

Andrew Burdett is a twenty-something from Maidenhead in Berkshire, working for ITV News.