Gizmodo: priest

Have Your Cellphone Blessed By a Japanese Shinto Priest

Jason Chen — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Handsome man Brian Ashcraft has no luck with his phones. It's not that he misplaces them, it's that they try to escape from his handsome clutches. That's why he had to turn to a Shinto priest.

His latest contribution to Wired paints a picture of people in Japan asking these priests to bless all kinds of electronics to protect them from misbehaving, from copies of Windows XP to Roombas to copies of Windows Vista. Pretty much anything you can bring in, they will bless (as long as you pay them). Head on over to Wired to get the full story. [Wired]

Priest Infects Church Network By Surfing the Web for Porn (NSFW)

Jesus Diaz — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 23:45:00 EDT

A priest has resigned from his parish after being caught viewing web porn in his computer at work. While I'm sure God doesn't give a damn about porn—no matter how close it is to heaven—or the weaknesses of this priest, the church's IT staff and the archbishop weren't so amused when they discovered that his porn surfing antics had infected all the computers in the parish network.

The parish padre, from the town of Strängnas, Sweden—my favorite country in the world—admitted his actions, saying that it was true he spent "a lot of time at work viewing pornographic websites" and he wished his lust would have remained between himself and God instead of infecting the computers with this "lethal computer virus". Well, Mr. Svenssonjohanssoncommandersson, seriously, don't flagellate yourself over a computer virus. This kind of things happens to the best, although archbishop Anders Wejryd is not so understanding as we are:

Priests are people too, but I have no understanding at all for someone sitting and surfing for porn on the parish computers.

Well, archbishop, better watching porn than touching little kids like some of your colleagues elsewhere in the world, that's for sure. Apparently, however, some definitive action was needed with the Strängnas priest after another pastor in my beloved Göteborg "came under scrutiny for moistening post-it notes with his penis and sticking them up in an office." Inexplicably, this one was allowed to keep his job.

And yes, we need video of that. [The Register]

Sad Ending: Flying Priest Found Dead in the Atlantic, God Positioning System Still Missing

Jesus Diaz — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 12:30:00 EDT

Father de Carli, the flying priest who got lost last April, has been found dead in the middle of the Atlantic. In an effort to raise funds for a local charity organization, De Carli planned to stay for more than 19 hours up in the air using a thousand party balloons, taking a GPS with him to communicate his position in case of emergency. Unfortunately for the generous man, the trip ended in disaster.

His body was found yesterday by the Anna Gabriela, a tug working for Brazilian oil company Petrobras, 683 miles (1,100 kilometers) from Father De Carli's starting point. His trip started on April 20 after a mass, and his last contact was a desperate attempt to learn how to use his GPS and communicate his position as the wind took him deep into the Atlantic Ocean.

I need to contact someone who can teach me how to operate this GPS, so I can give the latitude and longitude coordinates, which is the only way that people on the ground can know where I am.

An Petrobras official spokesman said that "his clothes and shoes indicate that it's him." And now I don't know if I should say "Godspeed, Padre" or "this is another candidate for the Darwin Awards," so I would just say rest in peace.

[Editor's Note: I commend you for finding your way out of this world while trying to do some good for the rest of it. Rest in Peace, De Carli. -B.L.] [Bloomberg]