27 August 2015, The Tablet

Live penance


 
Because the confessional is one of the few zones of modern life to have resisted the entry of reality television cameras, there has been no recorded instance of a priest handing out a penance live on British TV.It happened, last week, though, during the Requiem Mass for Cilla Black, when entertainer Paul O’Grady, a close friend of the late singer and TV presenter, was delivering the eulogy at St Mary’s Church, Woolton.Describing their nights out together in New York, which helped to lift Cilla’s spirits after the death of her husband Bobby, O’Grady used the term “hellraising”, then, remembering where he was, ad-libbed “forgive me” to the main celebrant, Tom Williams, Auxiliary Bishop of Liverpool.The remark earned one of several loud laughs
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