VATICAN CITY–In perhaps his most populist and daring move yet, Pope Francis the First, also known as The People’s Pope, issued a divine apostolic proclamation (DAP) last week appointing St. Christopher to the position of patron saint of texting.
Although there are patron saints for every sort of occupation, special cause, infirmity, act of god, and contagious disease—from Aspergers to zoophobia—the church is noticeably lacking a patron saint of texting.
“In order to reach more souls we had to fill this position quickly,” said the pope during his weekly Facebook mass from the Vatican’s Church of the Digital Trinity.
“Thousands of people around the world, many of them Catholics, are killed or injured each year while texting,” said the pope. “We must reach out to these souls, even to the ones who might be thinking of sexting while driving.”
Like so many of the pope’s stunning innovations, such as hearing confessions via Twitter, the appointment of St. Christopher as patron saint of texting serves a calculated as well as a compassionate purpose. For example, many Catholics have labored under the misapprehension that Christopher had been somehow decomissioned from sainthood.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Father Malachi O’Reardon, senior account executive in the department of indulgences for the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN).
“Saint Christopher was something of an underachiever when he was patron saint of motor vehicles,” said Father O’Reardon. “As members of the heathen secular press were fond of noting, despite it being Christopher’s saintly duty to protect travelers in automobiles, more people died in car crashes each year than they did in war, and more than a few of those victims were killed when their brains were penetrated by statues of St. Christopher flying off their dashboards.”
To save face, not to mention faces, the church removed St. Christopher from active duty and assigned him to a desk job. His feast day was stricken from the liturgical calendar, and the church no longer encouraged devotion to him. Indeed, you would be more likely to find a priest with a dream catcher hanging from his rear view mirror than a St. Christopher medal.
The official reasons given for the church’s de-emphasization of St. Christopher was “due to a lack of historical evidence regarding his life and the prevalence of fantastic legends surrounding him, the most popular being that he was a rather ugly, giant man”; but if such were cause for demotion, there wouldn’t be enough saints left in good standing to fill a $24.95 EWTN Yearly Calendar of the Saints.
The pope’s appointment of St. Christopher as patron saint of texting has met with universal praise from Catholics everywhere.
“Is dis pope da bomb or what?” said Eugenio DeTumesco, a brick layer from St. Luigi the Enforcer parish in Chicago. “It’s about time St. Christopher got some DAP.”
And this just in: St. Christopher is already credited for potentially saving one life.
“I was driving along yesterday when I got bored and decided to sext my boyfriend,” said Christi Martinez, an elementary education major at West Cheater University in Pennsylvania. “But just as I was pulling my shorts off, I got my period and the mood was gone. I guess St. Christopher must have been looking out for me.”
Representatives of St. Christopher did not respond to repeated text messages requesting comments.
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