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Pope Francis will meet more than 100 comedians from 15 different countries at the Vatican on June 14, 2024, the Holy See Press Office announced on June 8. Among them will be several American comedians such as Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jim Gaffigan, and Chris Rock.
The aim of the meeting with these 106 entertainers is to pay tribute to "the unifying value of laughter" and to “celebrate the beauty of human diversity and promoting a message of peace, love and solidarity,” explained a press release by the Dicastery for Culture and Education and the Dicastery for Communications, who organized the event.
From the US there will be participants such as Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jim Gaffigan, Whoopi Goldberg, Conan O’ Brien, and Chris Rock. The largest nation represented will be Italy with 70 participants, such as for example the actor and film director Cristian De Sica. Florinda Meza García from Mexico will also be there.
The Pope often highlights the importance of a sense of humor
Pope Francis regularly advocates for humor as a characteristic of holiness. On June 23, 2023, he welcomed 200 artists from some 30 countries at the Vatican and emphasized that humor is a virtue we need to cultivate more.
Humour and irony are two virtues we need to cultivate more. The Bible is rich in touches of irony, poking fun at presumptions of self-sufficiency, dishonesty, injustice and cruelty lurking under the guise of power and even at times the sacred.
“A sense of humor is a grace that I ask for every day, and I pray that beautiful prayer of St. Thomas More: 'Give me, Lord, a sense of humor': that I can know how to laugh at a joke,” Pope Francis said in a 2016 interview to Italian TV network TV2000. “A sense of humor lifts you up, it makes you see the temporariness of life and makes you take things with a spirit of a redeemed soul. It is a human attitude, but it is the closest to God's grace.”
On October 6, 2022, addressing participants at a conference organized by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, the Argentine Pontiff said that "a sense of humor" is “an aspect of holiness.”
Using the phrase attributed to St. Teresa of Avila -- "un santo triste es un triste santo" (a sad saint is a sad excuse for a saint) -- he encouraged: "Approach life with a sense of humor, for enjoying the things in life that make us smile is good for the soul."
