GLOBAL GRIEF:

News Crap Australia has advised that it has extended the period in which members of the public can join its senior staff in mourning the death of Cardinal George Pell.

A spokesperson said since news of Pell’s death last week commentators and columnists from News Crap Australia’s newspapers and its Sky News pay TV service have been maintaining a vigil in the foyer of the company’s head office in Holt Street at Surry Hills in Sydney. (main picture)

“While they are naturally inconsolable at the passing of Cardinal Pell, they have been taking turns reading aloud their past and more recent columns lauding him as well as supporting each other when their emotions naturally overwhelm them,” the spokesperson said.

“All of the columnists have volunteered to be pallbearers at Cardinal Pell’s funeral in Sydney early next month – or Pellbearers as one of them quipped in a very brief moment of levity in between bouts of uncontrolled sobbing.

“There has even been a suggestion from one of them that they should all be buried alive with Cardinal Pell in the crypt under St Mary’s Cathedral to show their true and total devotion to him and all he stood for and for all the people he touched in his lifetime.

“A few of them are actually considering it, although most have rejected the idea outright and have expressed the belief that such a tribute should be reserved for the passing of Rupert Murdoch.

“Those who took that approach were very quick to assure anyone within earshot that Mr Murdoch is not expected to join Cardinal Pell for a very long time, and that it was certain they would both be reunited in death in the same place,” the spokesperson said.