TITTY TO BE IRELAND'S FIRST TRANNY `BRIDE'
Controversial Gay Bishop to Marry Couple.
The People (UK) August 18, 2002 Byline: Sinead King
HE used to be the only saviour for couples desperate to get hitched, but who the Catholic Church viewed as `unfit' to wed.
Yet now gay Bishop Pat Buckley has gone one step further in a move that will outrage the clergy.
For next week, controversial Fr Pat will join together a transvestite friend and her `groom' in holy matrimony.
It will be the first wedding in Ireland to feature a cross-dressed partner.
And it's set to spark groans of despair from the Catholic Church - and a former pal who says Bishop Pat has `lost the plot'.
Fr Pat, 50, has agreed to marry well-known Northern Ireland `girl' about town Baroness Titty von Tramp.
Titty and her groom-to-be have been planning to get hitched for months and from the outset Fr Pat said he'd host the service.
Bishop Pat and Titty, known to pals as Robert, have been mates for more than three years.
Controversy
And the pair were even snapped close together at a Mr Gay UK bash in Belfast's Kremlin club.
Since then Bishop Pat has courted controversy at every turn.
He was made a Bishop by rebel tridentine Bishop Michael Cox, who also ordained zany former pop singer Sinead O'Connor as `Mother Bernadette'.
Two years ago he rattled the church by celebrating Mass with disgraced priest Fr Sean Page, who had run off with Sligo mum-of-seven Marie Leydon.
Last year controversay and confetti rained again as Bishop Pat conducted Ireland's first gay wedding in Bangor, Co Down.
Both men getting hitched were Protestants.
Now, in what some will see as the last straw, it's the turn of a transvestite.
A former friend of the cleric told us: "It won't strike him as funny at all that a former priest who finally confessed that he's gay and has married a gay couple, is now marrying a transvestite and his lover.
"I think he's lost the plot."
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-90481250.html