The Priest's Wife (1970)

Augusto Mastrantoni: Monsignor Caldana

Quotes 

• Monsignor Caldana : You've got a mama, haven't you? And you know how mamas are. They like to keep their sons around the house but they prefer their sons to do their hanky panky out of the house, as long as they come home at night for dinner, and the church is a jealous mama like all mamas.

  Nun : Yes. The church is like a mama. You know that.

  Don Mario : Oh, so you're advising me to live in an ambiguous dirty way... to get myself a girlfriend on the sly... like those priests who go to bed with their housekeepers and the nuns.

  Nun : What is he saying about nuns?

  Don Mario : There isn't anything to worry about as far as you're concerned.

  Monsignor Caldana : Well, wh-what has this got to do with me? What are you asking for? Renounce your vows. Get castrated. I don't care! But leave me in peace. I'm too old, I'm too tired and I'm sick. I'm fed up with you and your vows of celibacy. That's all there is to it!

  [Nun jabs him with needle] 

  Monsignor Caldana : Ahhh! St. Lorenzo the martyr!

  Nun : Shame on you. Just a nip in the bottom.

• Monsignor Caldana : I refuse only to see those who bring shame on our children.

  Valeria Billi : Excuse me, what shame? There's a sheep in your flock that belongs to me. Give me my sheep back and we'll call it quits.

  Monsignor Caldana : The sheep already belongs to the Shepard.

  Valeria Billi : And if one of them gets tired of grazing. If one of them says, listen here, Shepard, I don't like your grass anymore, it doesn't agree with me, I'd rather have coffee and cake. You shouldn't try to stop him!

• Monsignor Caldana : You realize what you're saying?

  Valeria Billi : Yes, that I'm in love with a man and want to marry him.

  Monsignor Caldana : You want to marry a man whose already married to the church! No decent woman would even begin to think that...

  Valeria Billi : But, I didn't say that I was a decent girl. I said I was in love!

• Monsignor Caldana : One calls upon a priest to celebrate matrimony, not to consummate it!

• Monsignor Caldana : I'll appreciate you not telling me that tired old story about priest being men like all others. No! Because they're better than all the others. They're nothing if they're not superior.

• Don Mario : I would like to point out that things are changing. In the 16th Century they were still arguing about whether women had souls. Today, women even have the right to stand at the alter, next to the priest.

  Monsignor Caldana : But, they have not started to go to bed with them.

  Don Mario : Unfortunately, they have!

• Monsignor Caldana : You are under the grip of an unholy and insane passion. Stop wasting my time.