Do you have to love mustard to be happy in the Vatican? The question does not have a great deal of meaning, but it at least has the merit of posing the relevance of two papal expressions that we sometimes use in everyday language: "Happy as a Pope" and "Believe yourself the first mustard pot of the Pope" . In the program Historically yours with Matthieu Noël, Stéphane Bern dwells on the roots of these two expressions of origin, not surprisingly, religious.
"Today, I wanted to pay homage to John Paul I, the one we nicknamed 'il papa del sorriso': not the pope of chorizo, but that of 'the smile'. Unfortunately for John Paul I, the grin was for him of short duration, since he died 33 days and 6 hours after being enthroned head of the Catholic Church.
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Speaking of a pope and a smile, a question comes to me: why do we say 'happy as a pope'? The reason is extremely simple: it is obvious that for an ecclesiast, to become pope and to be elected by the cardinals represents a summit for who enters the orders. Pope, this is the highest office in Catholic belief and it is not possible to be closer to God. If you're Pope, then you couldn't be happier.
The claim of the "first mustard maker"
There is another lesser-known but more surprising papal expression: 'Believing yourself to be the Pope's first mustard pot.' It means 'to be pretentious'. It comes from John 22 who became pope in 1316 and who had a venial sin: that of loving mustard. He loved mustard so much that, in the organization chart, he created a new title: that of first mustard maker.
John 22 gave this role to his nephew who would have taken his new mission very seriously, with a ridiculousness that has remained in all memories in view of the quite relative importance of the function. For Emile Littré, the man of Littré, this title has never existed in the history of the Vatican. The veracity of the story is even questionable, but whatever: the legend was so beautiful it almost made it real. "