VATICAN CATCHES POKE'MON FEVER by Richard Owen Pokémon tales are moral, say bishops THE Vatican has given its blessing to the children's craze Pokémon, saying that the irritating but addictive "pocket monsters" are morally improving. The trading card and computer game phenomenon may be banned in many British school playgrounds and give parents nightmares, but Sat2000, the satellite television station run by the Italian Bishops' Conference, concluded yesterday that it did not have "any harmful moral side effects". Sat2000, an arm of the Vatican, said that Pokémon was "full of inventive imagination". At the heart of the game lay "ties of intense friendship" between the "trainer" and his monsters. The channel said that the Pokémon narratives were simple, but this allowed the imagination of a child "to enter directly into the story". The game - which is also a television series and a film - had the virtue of pushing children "in the direction of imagination and inventiveness". The newspaper Corriere della Sera said: "This is a true papal blessing for the latest craze." Pokémon: The First Movie opens in Italy this weekend in 150 cinemas for the Easter holiday. Pokémon cards and stickers are almost impossible to find because of demand. According to the Italian distributors, 50 million packets of Pokémon stickers and one and a half million sticker albums have been sold since the beginning of March. The cartoons - shown on a commercial channel owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the media tycoon and leader of the Italian centre Right - have gained a 60 per cent share of the children's television audience between the ages of four and 14. The bishops' benevolent view is not universally shared. There are fears that the Mafia will muscle in on Pokémon by counterfeiting cards and stickers, just as it fakes CDs and videos for sale at illicit street corner stalls. (Source: The Times Foreign News) back