Pope Leo, who caught a Tyrone jersey thrown at him in Rome this week, has alarmed his closest aides by totally changing his mannerisms and dialect since the incident. After celebrating Mass at St Peter’s this morning, he commented to the altar boys that it was a ‘deadly mass altogether’ and that it was ‘lethal to see a big crowd’, and was glad ‘them shower a hoors didn’t wreck it’, pointing at protesters outside the Vatican.

There are fears that he may start practising the dark arts, although it was only southern media suggesting that.

Leo, who once lined out for the Philadelphia Fighting Cocks at full back in 1977, marking Frank McGuigan out of the game, has already suggested he might attend a Tyrone game after asking reporters if they were ‘heading til Clones the year’ to looks of confusion from the Italian press.