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Byline: Fiona Looneys

I DON'T know if Fr Declan Blake is an ambitious man, but if he did have an eye on the Prada shoes of the fisherman, then he might want to look away now. Because the Parish Priest at St Laurence O'Toole in Dublin's Sheriff Street has just blown his chances of ever becoming Pope.

Simply, it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a priest who spoke with such compassion, wisdom, dignity and love at the funeral of a gay man to enter into the fusty kingdom of the Vatican.

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In fact, if Pope Benedict had been watching the TV coverage of Stephen Gately's funeral last weekend - and for all we know he may be a closet Boyzone fan - then he might just have become the first pope in history to give birth to kittens.

But if the Pope is displeased and the ambitions of Fr Blake are in tatters, then there was a whole raft of practising Irish Catholics - this writer amongst them - who raised a quiet cheer for the way in which this young parish priest conducted this beautiful, poignant funeral.

Fr Blake didn't so much acknowledge Stephen's sexuality as celebrate it; he didn't so much welcome Andrew, Stephen's husband, as embrace him. Literally, in fact.

Outside the church, the cameras captured this young parish priest - an ordained representative of a Church that shamefully espouses intolerance and homophobia - hugging the bereaved and brokenhearted husband of a man taken tragically young. For those of us who seek change in the Church, it was both a proud and humbling moment.

Earlier, in a very moving sermon, Fr Blake had acknowledged that Stephen had been 'a man of faith'.

For a long time in this country, pretty much right up to last Saturday afternoon, truth to be told, it wasn't perceived as possible to be both a gay man and a man of faith.

That, of course, is largely the fault of the magisterial Church but it is a view fake rolex that was also reflected by the liberal, secular community.

If the Church, in its brutal rigidity, preached that religious was good and gay was bad, then the secular view that gay was good and religious was bad has at times been just as divisive and as harsh. Stephen Gately, his family and their parish priest have shown that the two need not be mutually exclusive.

They have done us a great service, and the many, many Catholics who privately - and occasionally publicly - reject the superannuated cruelties of the Vatican as wholly unrepresentative of a developing, changing Church should thank them for it.

Politically, perhaps even cynically, it will also do us no harm that last weekend, the watching world witnessed a modern, inclusive Church at work in Ireland.

THE Ryan Report dealt a devastating blow to the image of the Irish Catholic Church abroad and at home, it caused many people of faith, myself included, to seriously question the integrity of the Church into which they were baptised.

Later this week, when the Dublin Diocesan Report is published and a cold light is cast again on the horrendous sins of the fathers of the traditional, hierarchical Church in this country, we will no doubt ask those questions again.

But last weekend, through the words and the inspirational actions of Fr Declan Blake, I recognised the Church of which I want myself and my children to be part.

As we struggle to deal with the horrors ahead