$30,000 for a watch? wtf? later in the article they said there is a watch worth $1 million.... ? I can't imagine what it is like to have that much fucking money. Even if I won $150 million in the lotto I wouldn't buy any thing so gaudy.

  The significance wasn't the cost of a watch, it was the obvious contradiction between the image of a religious leader and the alleged emphasis upon believers

not getting caught up with the vain pursuit of Earthly treasure.   If that wasn't true then why would they bother photo shopping it out to begin with ?

 I would spend "my" millions on a Bugatti Veyron and a slew of of bad ass Ducatis.  Fuck a stupid watch.

This. The problem isn't his taste in watches or the money he has... it's the overt attempt to avoid appearing materialistic.

Instant rice arrest, numbnuts.

Bingo, the internets! Let's teach the medieval batman that this is the 21st century and the world is looking.

Look what the watch says about that man's personal character. Let me guess. He's materialistic, greedy, corrupt or corruptible (the watch was likely a gift or a bribe), boastfully displays his wealth and seems not to care about poorer people, neither about their poverty, nor about their opinion. Unless the media look into the matter.

I don't know who of his staff retained a shred of Public Relations skills to think of dogtoring the photograph, or did he order it? I doubt so, he wore the watch at least since his 2009 lecture on the virtues of ascetism.

You guys might want to check out the movie Angels and Demons, I think it contains scenes like a cardinal coming out of a private jet plane smoking a cigarette and talking into a cell phone. Or maybe that's a different movie with Anthony Hopkins, I don't remember exactly.

Again I am impressed at the incredible amounts of stupidity and laziness that humanity can produce.
Of course the options of rolling the sleeve down or taking the watch off were never considered.
No! We must instead hire a graphic artist.
Yes.