- Video of the cyclist and the statue crashing into the back of a car goes viral
- Both the saint and the cleric end up sprawled across the vehicle’s boot
- St Jude is venerated as the Catholic saint for the hopeless and the despairing
A video of a devotee carrying a statue of St Jude the Apostle on his bicycle moments before crashing into a parked car has gone viral on social media.
In just over 12 hours the hilarious footage has been viewed a staggering 5.8 million times and shared by over 200,000 people.
In the video, recorded by a passenger in a minivan, two young cyclists are seen powering along a main road in Mexico City.
A holy tumble – the hapless cyclist and his sainted passenger suffered a nasty fall
St Jude was being carried on the distracted cyclist’s back – the extent of his injuries it is not known
St Jude the Apostle is venerated as the Catholic saint for the hopeless and the despairing
Mexico City is renowned for having some of the worst traffic congestion in the world
One man has a four-foot statue of St Jude strapped to his back while a boombox is fixed to the bike’s handle bars, blasting out reggaeton music.
The Catholic cyclist peers over at the minivan, filming the unusual spectacle, and while he is distracted he fails to notice a stationary vehicle right in front of him.
Both the cyclist and St Jude crash into the back of the car and end up sprawled across the vehicle’s boot.
St Jude, or Judas Thaddaeus as he also known, is venerated as the Catholic saint for the hopeless and the despairing, an irony not lost on netizens who found the cyclist’s mishap amusing.
St Jude’s feast day is 28th October and he is also revered as the patron saint of the impossible.
The Latin American Society for Religious Study said that he is the second most venerated saint in Mexico City, only surpassed by the Virgin of Guadalupe.
The saint is believed to be one of Jesus Christ’s 12 disciples and is referred to as Jude or Judas Thaddaeus to distinguish him from the maligned Judas Iscariot.