{"id":3245,"date":"2006-04-10T09:30:31","date_gmt":"2006-04-10T09:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html"},"modified":"2006-04-10T09:30:31","modified_gmt":"2006-04-10T09:30:31","slug":"life-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html","title":{"rendered":"Life changes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, this one:<\/p>\n<p>An odd article about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mailonsunday.co.uk\/pages\/live\/articles\/showbiz\/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=382495&amp;in_page_id=1773&amp;in_page_id=1773&amp;ct=5&amp;expand=true#StartComments\">Cliff Richard&#8217;s life changes, which include selling his home, possibly moving abroad, and an RC priest:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>There may, though, be more to the decision than a bout of cost-cutting. The life of Sir Cliff Richard, who has just turned 65, has seen many surprising changes in recent years, most of which, friends say, can be put down to the growing influence of Father John McElynn, the New Yorkborn Roman Catholic priest who has become a dominant presence in his life since they met six years ago. <\/p>\n<p>The two men have been described as virtually inseparable, sharing Sir Cliff&#8217;s houses and travelling extensively together. Significantly, they have been seen apartment-hunting in New York, where they are able to live anonymously, for despite Sir Cliff&#8217;s consistent British chart success &#8211; he&#8217;s had more Top 10 hits than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined &#8211; he is a virtual unknown in America. <\/p>\n<p>There is no doubt that Sir Cliff&#8217;s spending habits have altered radically since adopting McElynn as his confidant, companion and adviser. <\/p>\n<p>Steve Turner, the singer&#8217;s biographer, said: &#8216;For the first time in his life, Cliff has started to spend money rather than save it. He&#8217;s been doing a lot more travelling and seems to have a new lease of life. It&#8217;s clear that he is much happier in himself since meeting the priest. He&#8217;s gone from someone who rarely invited friends to dine at his home, to doing a lot more lavish entertaining. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;His decision to sell himself as a brand name, branching out into perfume and wine, also appears to be largely due to McElynn&#8217;s influence.&quot; Sir Cliff&#8217;s high-profile relationship with the Blairs, whom he met through the British Ambassador to Portugal, Sir John Holmes, in January 2000, is also considered to be part of this new profile. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"spacerW\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"spacerBlue\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"center top5\">\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>There&#8217;s much more in the story than what I&#8217;ve clipped. Take a look. <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Okay, this one: An odd article about Cliff Richard&#8217;s life changes, which include selling his home, possibly moving abroad, and an RC priest: There may, though, be more to the decision than a bout of cost-cutting. The life of Sir Cliff Richard, who has just turned 65, has seen many surprising changes in recent years,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Life changes - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Life changes - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Okay, this one: An odd article about Cliff Richard&#8217;s life changes, which include selling his home, possibly moving abroad, and an RC priest: There may, though, be more to the decision than a bout of cost-cutting. The life of Sir Cliff Richard, who has just turned 65, has seen many surprising changes in recent years,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-10T09:30:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Life changes - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Life changes - Via Media","og_description":"Okay, this one: An odd article about Cliff Richard&#8217;s life changes, which include selling his home, possibly moving abroad, and an RC priest: There may, though, be more to the decision than a bout of cost-cutting. The life of Sir Cliff Richard, who has just turned 65, has seen many surprising changes in recent years,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-04-10T09:30:31+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html","name":"Life changes - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-04-10T09:30:31+00:00","dateModified":"2006-04-10T09:30:31+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/life-changes.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Life changes"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}