My Dear Mrs Davies Anne,
Word has made it through the ecclesiastical grapevine that you are celebrating 25 years of being married to your husband Tref. I realise that you are not of the Catholic persuasion but I felt compelled to write to you on this, your very special occasion, to share with you some important news.
Familiar as we all are with Tref the realisation that you have stuck with him for so long took us all by surprise. To say that we were astonished is to greatly understate the reaction of everyone here at the Vatican City.
The purpose of this communication is not to ask why you have performed this amazing feat of endurance. It is a well known fact that love empowers and motivates people to perform feats beyond the ken of ordinary men and women.
We, and when I say we I include all the staff here in Rome (not a single dissenting Cardinal voice) wanted to let you know of our admiration for what you have achieved. You should know that most of us lock ourselves away in solitude and inner contemplation for many years in an attempt to attain the state of spiritual serenity that you have managed despite spending 25 years with the bloke and bringing up four intensely demanding children.
Not a generally publicised fact is that over the two millennia of development of the Catholic regime we now have well established methods of quantifying achievements such as yours.
Before I go further you need to understand the basic tenets of our achievement system. In our game growing levels of serenity are achieved by the chanting of a Hail Mary. One million Hail Marys gets you a Cardinalship. To be a Pope needs at least five million. Anyone hitting the 10 million mark is considered to have done enough to achieve sainthood. It’s pretty impossible for ordinary people to attain this level.
I don’t need to tell you that even the Cardinalship is a bit of an ask. Some people spend a lifetime saying Hail Marys and never get there. For most it is simply beyond their reach.
Where is all this going I hear you ask and well you might. The fact is that the physical act of putting up with Tref for so long has been assessed as being the equivalent of having to say a penance of 1,000 Hail Marys for every day you have been together.
A quick back of a bible calculation suggests that 25 years, which is 9,125 days give or take a leap year at 1,000 Hair Marys a day comes up well over 9 million Hail Marys. Ordinarily that would immediately fast track you through a Cardinalcy to an instant Papacy.
Now there are two problems here. One is that there is already somebody in the job, ie me. If this were the only obstacle it would be remiss of me if I weren’t to tell you that this is not an insurmountable problem. There are ways around it as was shown with my own appointment.
However the fact that you are a woman is the killer. I’m afraid that the Papacy, for a complex web of reasons which I don’t propose to discuss, is very much a case of jobs for the boys.
This isn’t to say that we don’t think we shouldn’t do something. We, my dear Anne, have been sufficiently impressed with you that we wanted to make a positive show of support.
We have revisited your case and are able to increase your tally of Hail Marys based on a number of fiddle factors. Firstly our initial estimate of 9 million one hundred and twenty five thousand Hail Marys can be raised by the use of alternative Papal calendars that need no clear definition or clarification for the purposes of these calculations. Then we are able to add an escalation factor based on the fact that you had four kids (are you sure you aren’t a catholic?).
One disingenuous individual did suggest that strictly speaking all this should be offset by the fact that you lived with Tref before getting married which comes with negative Hail Marys. This person has now been posted to a Parish on a desert island somewhere off the coast of South Georgia (I will not go back on this – it’s a tough job being a Pope – you make a decision, you stick with it).
Anyway to cut a long story short, and recognising that I am going on a bit here, we have come up with a revised Hail Mary count that takes us well North of the 10 million mark and Mrs Davies bach Anne we all know what that means don’t we?
Anne, I have been authorised by the Vatican boys to make you an offer that I think you won’t be able to refuse. Anne we would like you to accept a sainthood.
If you would like to take us up on this offer please complete the enclosed form and return in the envelope supplied. You will need to put a stamp on it (times are hard).
This offer comes with an associated package of benefits. You will receive your own saints day together with a shrine, location to be confirmed but the suggestion has been made that it will be at the location of your ironing board. You will also need to decide on an activity that will be performed on your saint’s day. Initial opinion is that this should involve mothers and wives everywhere spending the day being pampered at a spa.
So that’s it. I hope that you will take us up on our offer. It will involve conversion to the Catholic church but I assume that this will not be a problem – it certainly won’t be from our end (wink wink).
All the best and have a great celebration.
Yours in expectation
The Pope.