Already dogged by a reputation for promoting religious extremism abroad and repression at home, the government of Saudi Arabia now faces growing resentment at the soaring price of oil. As is their custom, Saudi rulers have responded with a public relations campaign. It's a campaign built on deception.

On May 8, Saudi royals placed a full-page ad in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Times of London, and other papers proclaiming that a charity founded by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud, a nephew of King Abdullah and the world's 13th-richest person, had been honored by the pope. Directly under a Koranic passage on tolerance, the headline declared: "Alwaleed bin Talal Humanitarian Foundation, representing Kingdom Foundation, awarded the Pontifical Medal by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican."

At the center of the page was depicted a medallion bearing the image of Pope Benedict XVI, which the ad labeled "The Pontifical Medal." The Holy See's coat of arms was displayed bottom center, implying that the ad carried the imprimatur of the pope.

All of this seemed unlikely on its face. Take that coat of arms. The ad labels it "The Vatican," a term never used by the Holy See to identify itself. More fundamentally, no church has yet been permitted in Saudi Arabia, a point the pope pressed with King Abdullah at a first-of-its-kind meeting last November. Nor does any great service to the Church figure among the benefactions for which Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal is best known--the check to New York City famously refused by Mayor Giuliani after 9/11; the gifts to the Carter Center and the presidential library of George H.W. Bush; the donations to universities like Harvard and Georgetown which now boast "Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centers" for Islamic studies.

But then, what was going on? Neither the American mainstream press nor the Catholic press had reported any papal decoration of a Saudi prince. A search of the Holy See's website turned up nothing. Most Google hits for "Pontifical Medal" were Arabic papers' echoes of the very PR material presented in the ad. And official listings of the honors awarded by the Vatican--knighthoods in the Orders of St. Gregory the Great and the Holy Sepulcher, for example--made no mention of the medal shown.

Besides, why would the Vatican confer a high honor on this Saudi prince? A Catholic knighthood normally requires a recommendation from the local bishop, and Saudi Arabia tolerates no "local" bishops or Christian clergy of any kind. Repeated calls to the Vatican embassy and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington and to the Holy See's press office in Rome brought no clarification.

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.