One morning the Pope awoke in his bed chamber in the
Vatican. To his surprise, he noticed that he had woken up
with a massive erection. Perplexed, he called on his
personal physician.

"Doctor, this should not be possible," he said, "I'm the
Pope, and I'm celibate! I haven't had one of these for 30
years!"

The doctor's reply was, "Well, father, this is a natural
phenomenon for all men, and it will happen even to you from
time to time".

The Pope exclaimed "But you must do something about this! I
have mass in an hour, and this thing isn't going away!"

The doctor replied "You have two options... either I can
administer an injection to your penis to make the problem go
away, which will hurt and make you feel ill, or you can just
quietly go into the toilet over there and relieve yourself."

Fearing the injection, the Pope elects the second option.
Unbeknown to him, a paparazzi photographer has sneaked into
the Vatican, and just as the Pope reaches that point of no
return, up pops the photographer and begins snapping away.
The Pope immediately summons his security guards, who arrest
the photographer, and begin to beat him up.

The paparazzo shouts out, "Hey, I thought you were a
Christian organization! What has happened to your
forgiveness?"

Upon refection, the pope agrees with the photographer, and
relents, saying "Yes, my son, you are right, we shall
release you. Unfortunately, we cannot return your camera, as
we cannot allow the scandal of what is contained on the film
to be seen in the outside world."

Never slow to take an opportunity, the photographer replies,
"But this is how I make my living! If you take my camera,
I'll lose the money I could have sold the photographs for!"

The Pope, feeling guilty, agrees. "Very well, we will
compensate you. How about $100,000?"

Ecstatic, the man agrees, and is soon on his way. The Pope,
meanwhile attends confession, and the whole story comes out.
For his penance, he is therefore ordered to walk three times
around St. Peter's, with the offending camera around his
neck. Out on his walk, he meets a Japanese tourist:


"Ah, so, very nice Japanese camera you got there, Mr. Pope,"
says the man, "how much you pay for it?"

"Being the Pope, I cannot tell a lie," he replies, "I must
confess that I paid $100,000 for it."

"Ah," says the Japanese gentleman, "look like someone saw
you coming!"