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A priest close to Tony Blair believes the Prime Minister will declare himself a Roman Catholic after leaving No 10, it was reported yesterday.Father Michael Seed, who says Mass for the Blairs at Downing Street every week, is said to have made the prediction to friends at a recent memorial service.
Father Seed did not deny the story when contacted but said he did not know if Mr Blair would ever be received 'formally' into the Catholic church, a newspaper claimed.
To do so he would have to take part in a ceremony called the rite of Christian initiation for adults, followed by confirmation and taking the sacrament of Holy Communion.
It has long been speculated that Mr Blair would eventually convert to Catholicism.
His wife Cherie is a staunch Catholic and has become even more committed to her faith following a face-to-face meeting with Pope John Paul II in 2003.
Father Seed, who is well-known for bringing high-profile politicians and aristocrats to the fold, told The Times: 'He's been going to Mass every Sunday. He goes on his own when he is abroad, not just when he is with his wife and children.'
Other church sources said many of the early saints and martyrs were not baptised, but instead had a so-called 'baptism of desire'.
One clergyman said the Blairs were Catholic by desire and so did not need a formal conversion, the newspaper claimed.
Mr Blair is technically an Anglican, but is not known to attend Anglican services aside from state and formal occasions.
He has always been reluctant to discuss his religious beliefs. Alastair Campbell, his former spin doctor, famously told one interviewer: 'We don't do God.'
However, Mr Blair's Catholic leanings have also been politically inconvenient on occasion, particularly on the issue of abortion.
In 2005 Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, criticised the Prime Minister for his reticence to re-open the abortion debate before the last election.
He warned that the Catholic community's traditional support for Labour had become a thing of the past.
Catholics have also criticised Mr Blair for receiving Communion at Mass.
Cardinal Basil Hume, the late Archbishop of Westminster, wrote to him in 1996 demanding he stop taking Communion at his wife's church in Islington.
But Mr Blair made it abundantly clear he did not agree with Cardinal Hume's opinion.
In a pointed letter to him, the Prime Minister reportedly wrote: 'I wonder what Jesus would have made of it.'
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