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Blair hoses down Catholicism talk
PRIME Minister Tony Blair today dismissed speculation that he intends to convert to Roman Catholicism. Blair is an Anglican but has accompanied his wife Cherie, a Catholic, and their children to Mass regularly, triggering several reports in recent years that he might switch faiths. Several British newspapers today quoted a Catholic priest, who regularly presides over services at Blair's country estate Chequers, as saying he thought Blair might convert. "If you ask me do you think he wants to become a Catholic, I would say yes," Father Timothy Russ, was quoted as saying. The Guardian newspaper quoted Russ as saying: "He didn't say to me, 'Can I become a Catholic?' What he said to me was 'Can the prime minister be a Catholic?" Blair dismissed the reports today, when asked about them by reporters accompanying him to a political summit in Hungary. "I am saying no. Don't they run this once a year?" he said, referring to the regular surfacing of the story. "I think they do. Every year I get this. My wife is a Roman Catholic," Britain's news agency Press Association quoted him as saying. Britain's state religion is the Church of England, a Protestant denomination. There is no constitutional barrier to a prime minister being a Catholic, though there hasn't been one since the early 18th century, when the title of prime minister first came into use, said constitutional expert Lord St John of Fawsley. By law, the monarch must be a Protestant. Posted by: tipper 2004-10-15 |
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