BY SHENGAS MCGLUMPHIE

A parish priest has made an impassioned plea to parishioners to stop trying to duck out early from Sunday mass, after a man in his 40s was caught dressing up as a 3-year old child so that he could sit in the crying chapel and leave early.

“Matters have gone beyond a joke”, complained Father Sean O’Leary of The Church of St Thomas, in Tullyhogue. “The most dangerous place in Tyrone is thon chapel car park after mass on a Sunday morning. I’ve seen pensioners sprinting for their cars who thirty minutes before could scarcely get their arses up off the pew to come up for communion. What’s the world coming to? Sunday’s sermon was one of the best I’ve done, all about Christian existentialism and the undecidability of faith. I totally nailed it, so people can’t complain that it wasn’t a riveting listen. And if they think I’m going to do all the exciting stuff on ecumenical theology, they can think on”.

Local man Eugene Moody, a 42-year old bird’s nest maker, admitted trying to pass himself off as a toddler.

“It’s all very well for Father O’Leary to go bangin’ on about the mystery of God and sucklike, but I had a slurry tank to clean. I thought the easiest way was to go into the crying chapel and then nip out early. What’s wrong with that? It was all goin’ fine, except I had had a skinful the night before at Tally’s in Galbally and my stomach was like one of thon lava lamps yolks from the 70s.By the time I came back from communion I was sweating like a horse and so help me God I vomited all over my romper suit. Jaysus, you should have seen the looks I was getting. At least I caught most of it in my bonnet. And then five minutes later did this weean next to me not go and do exactly the same thing, and nobody batted an eyelid. Explain that”.

Father O’Leary has since promised those parishioners who stay until the end of next Sunday’s mass that he will ‘have a wee word with the Lord about a lock of extra salvation’.