Father Jones, 42, was discussing Mary and the birth of Jesus when he went on to the subject of how poor and vulnerable people cope in the run-up to Christmas.

You’d think they’d cope the same way that I do — by going to the mall, waiting patiently in line at Santa’s workshop, ripping off his beard and loudly proclaiming him to be a fraud, handing out home-printed flyers about the dubious aerodynamics of reindeer and the eco-unfriendliness of stocking-coal, and then getting thrown out by security guard Drew. However, Father Jones had a slightly different suggestion.

Did he suggest to his congregants that they sell their possessions and give to the poor? Did he encourage them to share their tunics? Did he remind them that being poor is awesome?

Those would all be good guesses, but they’d also be wrong:

‘My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift,’ he told his stunned congregation at St Lawrence and St Hilda in York.

Not indiscriminately, though:

‘I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

And while I’m not personally a fan of this revised 8th commandment (“Thou shalt not steal, except when the costs are ultimately passed to the rest of us through higher prices.”), it seems likely that security guard Drew will be super busy keeping the sticky-fingered faithful out of JC Penney, leaving me another opening to visit Santa!