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The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20160110122536/http://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,,2220813,00.html

A saint with the powers of Superman

Saints don't ordinarily make good comic book heroes. Their super powers were rarely suited to heroics. Some of them possessed the Odour of Sanctity, which effectively meant they smelled really nice - miraculous in the Middle Ages, not so tough in the Age of Antiperspirant. St Drogo the Bilocator, it is alleged, had the ability to appear in two places at once, but he never used it to foil a bank robbery. St Brigid could turn her bathwater into beer, though not necessarily beer anyone would want to drink. The recently canonised Padre Pio once posted a letter that reached its recipient in under an hour, a feat that wouldn't have helped his application to join the X-Men.

The exception to all this is St Joseph of Copertino, because he could fly, just like Superman. St Joseph is, in fact, the subject of a new comic book - or graphic novel, depending on where you shop - entitled The Flying Friar (seeflyingfriarcomic.com).

Born in 1603 in Copertino near Brindisi, Joseph was nicknamed The Gaper as a child, because his mouth was always hanging open. Apart from repeated instances of levitation, he is also credited with supernatural healing powers and ecstasies from which he could not be aroused, even by beatings. The author of The Flying Friar, Richard Johnston, is not shy in playing up the parallels between Joseph and Superman. In the comic book, a meteorite heralds the birth of Joseph, a sight witnessed by young Lux Luther (a descendant of Martin Luther, whose name is unsubtly reminiscent of Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor). Lux's obsession with flying machines and Joseph's unscheduled levitations eventually lead to a bitter rivalry.

This may all seem a tad far-fetched, particularly the idea that anyone named Luther would settle in the Catholic hotbed of 17th-century Italy, but then again who believes someone could mail a letter and have it arrive an hour later? Pull the other one.

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