BLESSED DENNIS
Pope helps emotional comedian put painful family chapter to rest
WARMLY embracing the Pope, Les Dennis reaches the end of an emotional and spiritual journey.
The comedian finally got a chance to lay to rest a painful family episode that had festered for decades.
His mother Winifred renounced her Catholic faith when she had a child, Margaret, out of wedlock and the Church refused to baptise her. Winifred eventually asked to be buried a Catholic when she died from lung cancer aged 51 in 1977. But the incident hung over the family for decades. So when Dennis took part in a pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome as part of a BBC series, it finally gave him the chance to search for answers.
And it ended in tearful scenes for the TV star as he reached the Vatican, when Pope Francis blessed his mother. The former Family Fortunes host told the Pontiff: ‘My mother would be thrilled to know I held your hand’, to which Francis replied: ‘Greetings to your mother.’ Memories: Les as a baby with his mother Winifred and Margaret
Dennis, 65, said afterwards: ‘I didn’t know I was doing this for my mum when I set out. It was an epiphany in a way, but it wasn’t a religious epiphany – it was an epiphany about my family.’
Three-times-married Dennis was one of eight stars of different faiths who took part in BBC2 series Pilgrimage: The Road To Rome.
In last night’s episode, he explained how his mother refused to name any of her children after saints following the baptism incident.
The father of three said: ‘So she really did renounce the Catholic faith. She was a Catholic always and she needed to get that back and that’s why she died a Catholic.’
‘It was an epiphany’