A Christmas carol service in Sri Lanka surprised churchgoers by mistakenly supplying the lyrics to the Tupac Shakur song, Hail Mary, instead of those of the traditional Christian prayer.

Pictures of the programme from Joy to the World 2016, one of Sri Lanka’s largest carol services, were shared widely across social media over the Christmas weekend.

It lists the opening lyrics to the Hail Mary, a 1,000-year old prayer based on passages from the Gospel of Luke, as: “Makaveli in this … Killuminati, all through your body. The blows like a twelve-gauge shotty.”

The lyrics are in fact those of a 1997 track by the rapper Tupac Shakur.

Both renditions ask Mary, venerated as the mother of Jesus, to intercede on behalf of sinners, though Tupac’s version is more exhaustive in detailing the exact sins in question, including murder and drug-dealing.

The pictures were taken by Andrew Choksy, a Colombo man who attended the service. “A lot of people around us were in shock as to whether it was a joke, or if someone would actually rap the song,” he said.

“A few of the older ladies in front of us could not stop looking at the printed booklet.” He said he sent the pictures of the programme to friends, from where they spread and eventually found their way online.

“No explanation was given [by organisers] at all,” he said. “They didn’t acknowledge it at the venue. To be honest, I don’t think many people saw the booklet at all. The people that realised were shocked at first but then took it in good humour around me,” he said.

“To be honest, I was bursting inside.”