Personally, I think this sounds clever and cute. But others, I guess, disagreed.

From the AP:

The transportation agency for the nation’s capital has pulled a promotional video from YouTube after the Archdiocese of Washington complained about the star: a Pope Benedict XVI bobblehead doll.

The video aimed to encourage people to take Metro to next week’s papal Mass at Nationals Park. But Archdiocese spokeswoman Susan Gibbs said many people would not have been comfortable with it.

“Our concern is that this was a bad bobblehead,” Gibbs told the Washington Post. “You had unauthorized merchandise, and you had a misdressed pope.”

The video shows the bobblehead riding a Metro train and buying a special one-day pass. Metro’s media relations director, Lisa Farbstein, dreamed up the video and says no offense was intended.

There’s also this amusing detail, from the Washington Post write up:

In the video, the bobblehead rides the train next to a man reading “Car and Pontiff” magazine. The mock-up of the magazine, also done by Metro media relations, has photos of the popemobile. The man turns to the bobblehead and asks in Latin, “Car in shop?” Then he flips to the last page, which shows an ad about taking Metro to the Mass. “Thank Heaven for Metro,” the man intones.

Farbstein said the staff pulled the Latin translation from an Internet service. “We’re not 100 percent certain that it is grammatically correct, but this was all part of our tongue-in-cheek attempt at humor,” she said.

UPDATE: Good old reliable Rocco has the ad, if you’d like to see it. What can I say? I smiled.