Alwaleed Bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation Ad Misrepresentation

Sibley, Publisher
Ms. DiSetfano, Special Advertising Section
Business Week
1221 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Souvenirs from the Rome Gift Shop

Dear Mss. Sibley and DiStefano

I was jarred to find on Page 35 of this week’s edition of Business Week, a false and grossly misleading ad by the Alwaleed Bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation representing that it had been awarded the Pontifical Medal by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.

Ms. Nina Shea, Director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC has an article in the May 26th edition of The Weekly Standard about the ad that appeared in the May 8th editions of The Washington Post and the New York Times and, now Business Week, among other major US media.

Here is a link and an excerpt from Ms. Shea’s article:

In the end, it was consultations with an independent expert on the Vatican and interviews with several recipients that solved the mystery: The medal shown in the ad is a common souvenir.
It is minted each year by the thousand and handed out as a memento to those granted an audience with the pope. All the staffers at the American embassy to the Holy See, for instance, have received it. It was given to White House officials when Pope Benedict met with Bush. It is for sale at the Vatican bookstore. It confers no honor at all.

In 2006, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, in a letter to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, quoted the king as referring to his government as the “Vatican of Islam.” The implication is that Saudi Arabia is not only hallowed ground as host of the two holiest Muslim sites, but also the arbiter of Islamic orthodoxy.