A priest has criticised parents who reduce their child’s First Communion to an “orgy of materialism with miniature brides”, claiming many children never return to Mass the following Sunday.

Fr Paddy O’Kane, parish priest for Ballymagroarty in the diocese of Derry, said some families prepared their child for First Communion simply “because everyone else is doing it”.

“Perhaps is a harmless tradition keeping them in a club which for all its flaws, they’d rather remain part of,” he said. “Or they don’t want their child singled out as different. Or they just want to throw a party.