diff --git a/jrnl/Journal.py b/jrnl/Journal.py
index 4fdffa14..bd1eab52 100644
--- a/jrnl/Journal.py
+++ b/jrnl/Journal.py
@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ class Journal(object):
             util.prompt("ERROR: Your journal file seems to be corrupted. You do have a backup, don't you?")
             sys.exit(1)
 
-        padding_length = ord(plain[-1])
+        padding_length = util.byte2int(plain[-1])
         if padding_length > AES.block_size and padding_length != 32:
             # 32 is the space character and is kept for backwards compatibility
             return None
diff --git a/jrnl/util.py b/jrnl/util.py
index 3a92f0e4..315666b3 100644
--- a/jrnl/util.py
+++ b/jrnl/util.py
@@ -145,3 +145,10 @@ def int2byte(i):
     """Converts an integer to a byte.
     This is equivalent to chr() in Python 2 and bytes((i,)) in Python 3."""
     return chr(i) if PY2 else bytes((i,))
+
+
+def byte2int(b):
+    """Converts a byte to an integer.
+    This is equivalent to ord(bs[0]) on Python 2 and bs[0] on Python 3."""
+    return ord(b)if PY2 else b
+