Irene Reilly, here and now

You mean A Confederacy of Dunces is fiction? I'm shocked, shocked. You've rocked my world. I thought I knew these people when I lived in New Orleans.

I once knew some Italian people who buried their statue of St. Anthony in the back yard, upside down, until he successfully interceded for them, I forget about what.

If you want your house to sell you bury a statue of St. Joseph in your backyard, upside down. If you want to find something you have lost, you bury St. Anthony of Padua in your backyard. BTW, when I was Catholic and my ex-mother in law buried the statue, the house sold that week.

FYI - Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua are holding the Christchild in their arms in their statues.

My mom is a parishoner at Our Lady of Fatima. There is a room devoted to OLF where there are statues of children on their knees in devotion to a statue of Mary. I used to tell friends when I tried to explain this whole tradition, "Catholicism is such a great religion, not only do we worship statues, our statues worship statues".

For post modern sceptics:
try this Brit-priest's take, who links GK Chesterton's

"I love my religion and I love especially those parts of it which are generally held to be most superstitious."

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000299.shtml

(H/T) the Jesuits @ insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2008/08/ the-loveliest-o.html#comments

Just for the record, the St.-Joseph-in-the-backyard ritual is almost certainly an ersatz twentieth-century (and now twenty-first) invention, not an authentic folk tradition.

John C.: Those are actually supposed to be the children to whom Our Lady of Fatima appeared, not just random children.