Pope St. John XXIII

Pope St John XXIII on the sedia gestatoria.

Pope John XXIII was known for his funny remarks. Pope John rarely used the Sedia Gestatoria, that chair carried by 8 men. One day he decided to raise the salary of those carriers. When they asked him why, he simply replied: ‘They deserve the raise, to counter the added weight they have to carry.’

Just after he was elected Pope, he was meeting Bishop Fulton Sheen at the Vatican. As he welcomed Bishop Sheen he said to him: ‘The Lord knew for 77 years that I was going to be a Pope. Don’t you think he should have made me a little more cute and less chubby!’

While visiting Regina Coeli prison at Christmastime in 1958, he admitted to the prisoners that he too had stolen an apple when he was a child. He told the prisoners ‘That day I had a great sense of remorse like all of you. I spent a long time worrying about my mistake. But I was lucky because I was never caught. And if I was caught, how could I have given that apple back? I had eaten it a long time ago!’

One day in the Vatican Gardens, Pope John met the gardener who was bottling some wine from the small vineyard. He filled a glass with the wine, tasted it as the wine connoisseurs like to do. After he drank it, the Pope said: ‘Enrico, do me a favor, don’t let the Monsignori taste this wine, because they would want it for the Mass, and they may end up saying 4 or 5 Masses each day!’