25 Shillings Pope Reading

Somalia's 2004 novelty coinage series was produced during a period when the country had no functioning central government — the Central Bank of Somalia existed largely on paper, and these pieces were struck by private mints for export and collector sales rather than any genuine domestic circulation. The "Pope Reading" subject almost certainly references John Paul II, who died in April 2005, making this part of a wave of anticipatory or memorial issues flooding the market from nominal African issuers in the early 2000s.

KM# 153 belongs to a loose family of Somali collector pieces that drew repeated scrutiny from the hobby press over licensing and authorization questions.