Liberal cleric on vacation's caught attending colourful festival (8)
I believe the answer is:
catholic
'liberal' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'cleric on vacation's caught attending colourful festival' is the wordplay.
'on vacation's' suggests removing the centre (after the inside letters have vacated the word).
'caught' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'attending' becomes 'at' (e.g. at school means attending school).
'colourful festival' becomes 'holi' (I've seen this before. I am not sure about the 'colourful' bit.).
'cleric' with its centre taken out is 'cc'.
'at'+'holi'='atholi'
'cc' enclosing 'atholi' is 'CATHOLIC'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for catholic that I've seen before include "Universal like major Christian religion" , "Believer, of a sort" , "Eclectic" , "Chat Clio up to be universal" , "Member of Roman church" .)