WelCom February/March 2025
Ian Munro
Have you heard this joke about Pope Francis? I hadn’t until just recently. It goes like this.
As soon as Pope Francis arrives at the airport in New York for his apostolic journey in the United States, he finds an enormous limousine waiting for him. He is rather embarrassed by that magnificent splendour, but then thinks it has been ages since he last drove, and never a vehicle of that kind, and he thinks to himself: OK, when will I get another chance? He looks at the limousine and says to the driver, ‘You couldn’t let me try it out, could you?’
‘Look, I’m really sorry, Your Holiness,’ replies the driver, ‘but I really can’t, you know, there are rules and regulations.’
But you know what they say, how the Pope is when he gets something into his head – in short, he insists and insists, until the driver gives in. So Pope Francis gets behind the steering wheel, on one of those enormous highways, and he begins to enjoy it, presses down on the accelerator, going 50 miles per hour, 80, 120 – until he hears a siren, and a police car pulls up beside him and stops him. A young policeman comes up to the darkened window. The Pope rather nervously lowers it and the policeman turns white.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ he says, and goes back to his vehicle to call headquarters. ‘Boss, I think I have a problem.’
‘What problem?’ asks the chief.
‘Well, I’ve stopped a car for speeding, but there’s a guy in there who’s really important.’
‘How important? Is he the mayor?’
‘No, no, boss … more than the mayor.’
‘And more than the mayor, who is there? The governor?’
No, no, more. …’
‘But he can’t be the president?’
‘More, I reckon. …’
And who can be more important than the president?’
‘Look, boss, I don’t know exactly who he is, all I can tell you is that it’s the Pope who’s driving him!’
Pope Francis retells this joke about himself in his new book, Hope: The Autobiography. He has discussed the importance of humour on a number of occasions in the past. He believes when it becomes hard for us to cry seriously or to laugh passionately, we have become anesthetised adults who can do nothing good for ourselves, society, or the Church.
Most recently, he talked about humour with an invited international audience of comedians. He told them that humour is a precious gift, a gift that can spread peace within our hearts and between peoples, helping us to overcome difficulties and cope with daily stress.
‘In your own way,’ he said in his address to them, ‘you unite people because laughter is contagious. It is easier to laugh together than alone. …You denounce abuses of power; you give voice to forgotten situations; you highlight abuses; you point out inappropriate behaviour. You do this without spreading alarm or terror, anxiety or fear, as other types of communication tend to do; you rouse people to think critically by making them laugh and smile.’1
Joy in the Holy Spirit
In his 2018 apostolic exhortation, Gaudete et exsultate, Francis previously made the point that Christian life is ‘joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Rom 14:17) and far from being ‘timid, morose, acerbic or melancholy, or putting on a dreary face, the saints are joyful and full of good humour’. His namesake, St Francis of Assisi, would refer to himself and his followers as Jongleurs de Dieu, or Troubadours of God, as they travelled from town to town singing and preaching joyously.
Fundamentalist or overly pious believers in some religions might hold that humour and spirituality are incompatible and, when I reflect on the last two and a half decades of this century, particularly post-Covid, it seems to me that we have moved from the hopeful promise of the new millennium of peace and prosperity and lightness of heart and spirit to an age of anger and grievance, too easily taking offence.
I’m certain so much could be sorted with our legendary Kiwi compassion and sense of humour. Both still exist in many corners of our communities but are loudly and stridently shouted down more readily than those attributes are promoted. Our self-effacing modesty is no match for those with other agendas and we are in danger of becoming an embittered people with any humour having a hard, sarcastic, bullying and generally unpleasant edge to it – humour that does little more than belittle others.
…and a time to laugh
Many seem to be forgetting that there is both ‘a time to weep and a time to laugh’ (Eccles 3:4). Joy and laughter are part of our Christian heritage as much as the weeping and sadness. And both are part of simply being human.
Jesuit theologian, Fr Karl Rahner wrote that laughter is first and foremost an affirmation of our humanity. We firstly relate to those telling the jokes or sharing a humorous story and then respond through laughter, which is an expression of solidarity and love.
‘The laughter of daily life announces and shows that one is on good terms with reality. …Laughter is praise of God because it foretells the eternal praise of God at the end of time, when those who must weep here on earth shall laugh.’2
Humour is usually the only weapon oppressed people have, and the shared laughter helps to keep them going. Jewish humour is legendary, and Mahatma Ghandi reportedly remarked that without his sense of humour he would long before have committed suicide.
Humour allows for a sense of proportion, and I think that being able to laugh at our own mistakes and foibles is also important in this sense. It shows a degree of self-awareness and an ability to forgive ourselves, an attribute we need if we are truly to be able truly to forgive others.
Grant me, O Lord, a good sense of humour
In his address to the assembled comedians, Pope Francis tells that he daily prays St Thomas More’s prayer, ‘Grant me, O Lord, a good sense of humour’ (see panel).
I wouldn’t go as far as Mark Twain and describe humour as mankind’s greatest blessing. There’s another contender for that designation. However, I would suggest the ability to laugh with others and at ourselves is a blessing. I think we need to take advantage of that blessing and heed Pope Francis’s advice to do a lot more laughing and take life a little less seriously.
Ian Munro is a writer and columnist. He is a member of Our Lady of Hope Parish Tawa-Titahi Bay and a member of the Wellington Archdiocese Ecology, Justice and Peace Commission.
- Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to Comedians, Rome, 14 June 2024
- Karl Rahner, The Content of Faith: The Best of Karl Rahner’s Theological Writing, Crossroad Publishing, New York, 2013
“Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest.
Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humour to maintain it.
Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil, but rather finds the means to put things back in their place.
Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumbling, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called ‘I’.
Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humour. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke and to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others”. Amen.
– St Thomas More
