St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina is one of the most popular saints of modern times. What most people do not realize is, aside from being super holy, he was also quite funny. In your further veneration of him, here are some of his joked.
Doctor Ox
Italian actor, singer, and comedian Carlo Campanini told his doctor that he was going to see Padre Pio, and the nonplussed doctor replied that Padre Pio got the stigmata because he thought too much about the wounds of Christ. When Campanini saw Padre Pio the next day, Pio told him, “When you see your doctor, tell him to think intensely about being an ox. Let’s see if he grows horns.”
BOOM ROASTED
“Three things are useless: washing a donkey’s head, adding water to the ocean, and preaching to nuns, friars, and priests.”
A long sermon
One day after hearing a priest preach a rather long homily, Pio was asked by the preacher what he thought of his sermon. He replied, “Good, but if you kept on much longer you’d be talking to yourself.”
His Marian joke (with a lesson)
“One day Our Lord making rounds of Paradise saw some strange faces. He asked Peter, ‘Who let these people in?’ Peter: ‘Nothing to do with me.’ The Lord: ‘But you have the key.’ Peter: ‘There is nothing I can do, and you can’t do either.’ The Lord: ‘What do you mean?’ ‘It’s your mother. Every time she finds my back turned, she opens the gate and lets somebody in.'”
Upon hearing someone say they had only committed light sins…
“Did you weigh them on the pharmacist’s scale?”
When he learned another priest had a hearing aid
“Take it off. Let me see it.” As soon as he had it in his hands he said, “Come on, boys. This is the right time to talk bad about Padre Costantino. He can’t hear now!”
Headache wisecrack
A fellow priest asked for prayers because he was going to the doctor for bad headaches. When the priest returned a week later, he reported, “They didn’t find anything in my head”. Padre Pio replied, “That is something that we all knew already.”
To an emotional groom
When the groom at a wedding had trouble getting out his vows, Padre Pio asked, “Well, when are you going to say yes? Perhaps you want me to marry her?”
A train joke he was fond of telling
A poor peasant in Italy was traveling on a train bound for Naples. For some strange reason, a Bishop ended up sitting next to the peasant. Before long a storm erupted outside, and the peasant stared out the window, watching and listening, seemingly unafraid, as the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning ripped across the Italian countryside and sky. It seemed as if the devil himself had taken charge and was punishing the earth. As the rain beat against the train windows and the lightning flashed outside and the thunder rumbled above the train roof, the Bishop, obviously alarmed and terribly afraid, said to the peasant, “It looks as if we are going to Hell!” The poor peasant, unafraid of the weather or death or even of the powerful Bishop, said, “I feel sorry for you. You must only have a one-way ticket. I have a return ticket, so I’m not afraid one bit.”
When someone said they wished he would live another fifty years…
“What harm I have ever done to you?”
When they asked him what he thought about the tomb they were building for him…
“I think that it’s a bit smallish, and I will not have much air to breath.”
A quip to a new father
A couple who were struggling to have children turned to Padre Pio for his prayers. The wife became pregnant but soon became worried she would lose the baby. One night not long before the baby was born, she had a dream that she was giving birth and Padre Pio was in the room. After this, her fears subsided. After the baby was born, she wanted to go visit Padre Pio to thank him. Her husband kept telling her it was just a dream, but she persisted. So they went to visit him. When he saw them, Pio said to the husband, “So, it was all just a dream, eh?”
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