Jimmy McGovern recalls the controversy surrounding his first film Priest to Laura Davis

IT WAS the only solution – get the kids into their Communion frocks and bus them down to London. The Catholic Church had put its foot down – Jimmy McGovern would not be filming inside any of its property within the North West.

It was 1994, and McGovern was hot property. He had scored a blinder with Cracker, the TV drama about an alcoholic yet brilliant criminal psychologist, played by Robbie Coltrane.

Priest, the story of a young gay clergyman, was to be his first film. It would also be one of his most difficult to complete.

“I remember there was a Friday afternoon and I had been up to do a writers’ workshop in a prison,” recalls the 58-year-old Liverpool screenwriter.

“One of your Christian duties is to visit the imprisoned and we were detained there for hours because one of the prisonners had gone awol.

“I got out eventually and there were something like 14 messages on the answer machine and I came back to discover that we had lost every single location.

“Somebody advising Archbishop Worlock at the time had said ‘this is scandalous’ and the Catholic Church then leaned on the people who were offering us locations and every one pulled the offer.”

Despite having to shoot the church interiors in London, McGovern completed Priest, which was well received by viewers and critics.

It will be given a special screening at FACT on Monday, alongside a Q&A session with its creator, to raise funds for the youth film project Clapperboard UK.

McGovern, the fifth of nine children born to Catholic working class parents, still seems exasperated by his Church’s reaction.

“It broaches a serious subject in a deeply Catholic way and a responsible way,” he says of the film,

“I did not expect that reaction.

“A couple of years later, I was told by an impeccable source, Archbishop Worlock sat down to watch the film and he said ‘what was all the fuss about? This is a deeply Catholic film.”