I’ve been trying to remember a joke I heard a while back. Four women are discussing their sons. One is a priest, and when he walks into a room everyone greets him with,“Hello, Father, how are you, Father?”
Not to be outdone, the second woman says her son is a bishop, and everyone greets him with…
This is where I blank out. What are the proper ways to address a bishop and cardinal? I think one of them is Your Excellency, but I don’t remember which.
In the Roman Catholic world, a bishop is addressed as “His Excellency” and a cardinal as “His Eminence”. Making the last step, the pope is “His Holiness.”
I’m pretty sure a cardinal is Eminence, and a bishop might be Grace.
So…how does the joke end?
When I was in Catholic school, bishops were addressed as ‘Your Grace’.
::resisting impulse to make terrible joke about kissing their ring::