One Sunday, in the pulpit, he said, “If I hear one more person confess to adultery, I’ll quit!”
Everyone liked him, so they came up with a code word. Someone who had committed adultery would say instead that they had “fallen.”
This seemed to satisfy the old priest and things went well until the priest passed away at a ripe, old age.
A few days after the new priest arrived, he visited the mayor of the town and seemed very concerned.
“Mayor, you have to do something about the pavements in town. When people come into the confessional, they keep telling me they’ve fallen.”
The mayor started to laugh, realising that no one had told the new priest about the code word.
But, before he could explain, the priest shook an accusing finger at him and shouted, “I don’t know what you’re laughing about, because your wife has already fallen three times this week!”