Tide of Mersey tears causes ripples in Rome

Mr. Socks, a recently deceased three-year old Tabby Cat, today took another step closer to becoming not just the first feline saint, but the holy figure with the shortest recorded gap between death and inauguration by the pope.
This astonishing ecclesiastical development is been driven by a huge groundswell of support from influential catholic groups in the northwestern city of Liverpool.
Belinda Meeck, organist at Saint Jaimes church in Croxteth, summed up the prevalent mood to us; "Ohhh god! He was only a little pussy cat! Why? Whhhyyyy-oh lord why? Under the wheels of the binman's lorry, he was only 21 in cat years-he had his whole life ahead of him".
Her testimony, replete with anguished vows of vengance against the man-known only as 'Binman A'- suspected of driving the lorry that killed Mr. Socks near Stanley Park last wednesday, was typcial of the attitudes of many heartbroken Liverpudlians.
At the Vatican, officials worried about declining interest in Catholicism worldwide have been accused of jumping on the bandwagon of affected, mawkish grief to further their own ends. This claim was denied by Cardinal Rodrigo Bolivar, head of PR for the papal state.
"How could we deny the saintly status of this cat? If his passing has evoked such paroxyms of seemingly genuine grief, shorn of all traces of the voyeuristic self-indulgence that seems to afflict so many people these days in the wake of tradgedies that do not concern them, then he must be truly a cat blessed by the lord."
"Our sources in Liverpool tell us that he was indeed special, a 'little miracle with a big heart and a bright future' they called him. Who are we to ignore the grief of those who knew him so well?"
Back in Liverpool, Catholic doctrines of forgiveness are in danger of being forgotten as heartwrenching grief turns to anger at police stations across the city. Mobs seem intent on tracking down the driver of the lorry-ironically only out at the time because a drain became unexpectedly blocked with chip fat, sheet music discarded by mediocre bands and tissues soaked with the tears of a metropolis.
As the mobs batter the reinforced doors behind which the constabulary-and Binman A-are sealed, a vigil is held on the cathedral steps.
The sun sinks behind the spires and the candles are lit in a silence broken only by a thousand quiet sobs, at this time one is almost prepared to take the odds offered by a shifty local on the renaming of the entire worldwide church as "The Church of Mr. Socks, he were a little bloody miracle you know" before the year is out.