Some prayers might make reference to wine, but they certainly don’t talk about Hennessy. Or emptying clips. Or, well, pretty much anything else found in Tupac Shakur’s 1996 song “Hail Mary.” But that wasn’t enough to stop one church in Sri Lanka from accidentally distributing the lyrics to the rap song instead of the Catholic prayer of the same name, CNN reports.
The lyrics were included in a booklet of prayers for the church’s Christmas carol service in the capital city of Colombo on December 11 and were immediately identified (and tweeted) by several people attending. The book, by the way, advertised the event as “A Festival of Music for Peace & Harmony” so a line like “F— the world if they can’t adjust, it’s just as well, Hail Mary” is going to raise some eyebrows:
A Christmas Carol service in Sri Lanka has accidentally printed the lyrics of Tupac’s Hail Mary, instead of the prayer.#SriLanka #lka pic.twitter.com/djhJPAWhcj
— Ravindu Thimantha G. (@IamRavindu) December 25, 2016
Instead of opening the booklet to the familiar refrain of “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee,” devotees were greeted by words of wisdom from Tupac like, “Makaveli in this, Killuminati, all through your body. The blow’s like a twelve gauge shotty, feel me.”
“A lot of people were in shock as [to] whether it was a joke or someone would actually rap the song,” churchgoer Andrew Choksy told CNN. “A few of the older ladies in front of us could not stop looking at the printed booklet.”
The booklet was apparently prepared by a young boy, who had simply downloaded the wrong version of “Hail Mary” from the internet, somehow glossing over lines like “Come with me, Hail Mary/Run quick see, what do we have here/Now, do you wanna ride or die?”
The error was caught soon after the books were distributed, according to Father Da Silva, from the Archdiocese of Colombo. “The page was in the middle of the booklet. When people looked at this page, they saw it before the start of the show. Two people saw it and alerted us to it,” he told CNN.
[h/t: CNN]
December 26, 2016 – 1:00pm