News Crap Australia columnist Greg Sheridan says he is prepared to launch last-minute legal action in a bid to be buried with the late Cardinal George Pell.

Cardinal Pell’s funeral will be held tomorrow in Sydney at St Mary’s Catholic Cathedral after which his remains will be placed in a crypt under the cathedral.

Mr Sheridan said he had been familiarising himself with the location (main picture) ahead of the funeral at which he plans to insert himself in the late Cardinal’s coffin “to ensure I spend eternity with the second-greatest man to walk the earth”.

However, members of the Pell family have blocked Mr Sheridan’s plans with a spokesperson saying: “Mr Sheridan’s idea is inappropriate and downright weird.”

Mr Sheridan responded by saying he was willing to offer a compromise that would involve his burial in a separate coffin alongside Pell.

“If that is unacceptable to the family then I’ll be heading to the appropriate forum to exercise my rights under the law,” he warned.

“By that, of course, I mean the Vatican and canon law,” he added.

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Australian newsprint suppliers say they have experienced their first shortage for many years in the lead-up to Cardinal Pell’s funeral tomorrow.

The Bug was informed that the shortage could be traced to a decision by The Australian newspaper to pre-print large sections of its Thursday hard-copy edition containing news stories about the funeral.

“Yes, we are printing a fair swag of The Australian’s news coverage of tomorrow’s Pell funeral today,” a News Crap Australia spokesperson said.

“Our presses simply aren’t big enough to print in a single run the enormous number of pages we want to devote to the funeral of this truly wonderful Australian so they’ll just have to run hot for much of today and again this evening and we’ll collate in the wee hours.

“After all, our writers know exactly what they want to say about Cardinal Pell. With such a vast volume of unquestioning homages the two-print option was the only way to go, albeit a costly one.

“In fact Gerard Henderson has already written a lengthy piece, in fact several lengthy pieces, attacking the ABC’s coverage of the Pell funeral tomorrow, so we might be looking at a double collation for Thursday’s paper,” the spokesperson said.

“Some older readers who are a bit frail might have trouble picking up Thursday’s edition,” he admitted.

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Caretakers at Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral have apologised for removing vast quantities of bright red ribbons that appeared overnight on the fence of the church where Cardinal George Pell’s funeral will be held tomorrow.

“We’re really sorry for cutting down and throwing away all of the ribbons which we suspected were put there by people protesting about Catholic Church-related child sex abuse and the late Cardinal’s role in dealing with past cases,” a cathedral spokesperson said.

“We were horrified when we found out that the ribbons were actually placed on the fence by a group of former Catholic priests in tribute to Cardinal Pell and symbolised the red tape he engineered to block or delay legal actions seeking redress for victims.

“We’re trying very hard to retrieve the ribbons from the dump and replace them before tomorrow.”