The Friar Who Kept Flying

Joseph of Cupertino was a terrible student, a distracted novice, and a friar of such spectacular uselessness that two religious orders turned him away before a third reluctantly took him in. He passed his ordination exam because the examiner happened to open to the one scripture verse he knew.

Then he started flying.

Not metaphorically. Witnesses described a shrill cry, followed by Joseph rising off the floor and remaining there. Music could do it. Someone mentioning God could do it. Once, a priest remarked that heaven was beautiful, and Joseph shot to the top of an olive tree, where he knelt on a branch that swayed as though a small bird had landed on it, for half an hour, until a friar fetched a ladder.

The institutional problem this created was considerable. You cannot run a monastery when one member might, at any moment, emit a shriek and ascend. For more than thirty-five years, his superiors banned him from the communal refectory, the choir, all processions, and public Mass. When crowds found him anyway, they moved him somewhere more remote. The Franciscans transferred him. Then the Capuchins supervised him. Then he went to Osimo, where he was forbidden to write or receive letters.

On being told of that final transfer, Joseph asked, "Must I go to prison, then?"

He is now the patron saint of aviation.