HAVING successfully marketed its own celestial version of "the real thing" for centuries the Vatican this week took umbrage at a reported joint venture association with a temporal contemporary which also has mass appeal, the commercially influential Coca Cola company. The organising committee of the Holy Year 2000 celebrations hotly denied reports in a Rome newspaper that the soft drink multinational may be one of the sponsors of the religious bash to greet the new millennium. Just as well. A liaison between such two massive egos symbolising the diametrically opposed forces of divinity and mammon is best avoided.