SANTIAGO, Chile — A judge in southern Chile has sentenced a Catholic priest to recite seven psalms daily during three months as punishment for illegal parking.
Judge Manuel Perez said he issued the unusual sentence after the Rev. Jose Cornejo said he could not afford the $100 fine that would have been the regular sanction for illegal parking in the city of Puerto Montt.
“He will have to recite seven psalms,” Judge Perez told the Santiago daily La Tercera.
“This is not a sentence that just occurred to me,” he added. “I did it as a tribute to Galileo Galilei, one of the greatest scientists of all time, who received a similar sentence from the Catholic Church during three years for saying the Earth rotates around the sun.”
The judge ordered a court official who lives near the priest to check daily that the sentence was being fulfilled.
The priest said he had parked his car in front of a school where he works because he lacked the money to pay for public parking.
Though in Galileo’s case the Holy Office had him recite seven penitential psalms on three consecutive Sundays and it was his eldest daughter Celestine who said them for him. So if their has been such an outcry over Galileo’s sentence shouldn’t this sentence be seen as much more severe over a parking ticket? This judge obviously has an ax to grind and the idea of an official being sent daily to verify the psalm sentencing is pretty over the top. Would this official bring with him an official psalm counter that he click off after each recitation?
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my parking transgressions.
Wash away all my traffic record
and cleanse me from my violations.
For I know my publicly available record,
and my driving points are always before me.
Against you, and the DMV, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
7 comments
Isn’t he already saying 10-13+ psalms per day anyway in the Divine Office?(sometimes they are broken up into sections so only 1 psalm is actually recited).
Or is ity in addition to that?
What, no Hail Marys?
Brian is right. If the good Father is saying his Divine Office like he’s supposed to, he’s already got this covered.
The penalty should be nothing, if he recites the Office like he should 🙂
It is a penance – therefore to be done in addition to that which he is already bound.
The real penance comes with the fact that the judge has ordered that he use the NAB translation!
The judge can’t ever get his history right. The Church didn’t say the earth does not rotate around the sun, it said Galileo is wrong for having a view that the Scriptures are not infallible. Another Black legend against the Church. This is a new form of an Inquisition.
If this is just the judge rehashing some vengeance fantasy right out of the 17th century, then shouldn’t this priest be allowed to let a nun cover for the psalms he owes? And shouldn’t the prick of a judge house him in a really nice villa?