"Brothers and sisters, as I have said and repeated many times, nobody consulted me about ascending Jesús de la Merced to the rank of general in the army."

Archbishop Oscar Vian said, after local media picked up the story that a parish priest had announced, in a Christmas Eve mass, that a beloved statue was going to be promoted the rank of general in the Guatemalan army.

The statue, Jesús de la Merced, was already a colonel in the army, having received that rank during the 19th century cholera epidemic. The statue's 300th anniversary is coming up, so it was believable that the statue would become a general, but the parish priest had it wrong.