Milan, Italy ---(UPI)--- Pope Paul VI as a schoolboy was "a little pest" who never sat still in classes, his first grade teacher said in an interview published in the magazine Gente.

"I never would have thought he would become Pope," said Ezechiele Malizia, 89, who now lives near Camignone, a village close to the Pope's birthplace of Concesio in northern Italy.

"He distinguished himself among the others and certainly not because he was quiet. He was rather, as one says, a little pest, always in motion."

Mr. Malizia added that he regarded this energy and alertness in the young Giovanni Battista Montini, who later became Pope Paul, as
a sign of intelligence.

Shortly after Pope Paul's election in 1963, Mr. Malizia went to the Vatican and visited him and the Pope said:

"My dear teacher, do you remember when you used to pinch my ears because I was always distracted?"