Full details of how Tony Blair ordered Downing Street officials to lie about his passionate commitment to Roman Catholicism throughout his ten years in No 10 emerged yesterday. Spin-doctor Lance Price said Mr Blair told him to kill off an accurate Press report in 1998 – months after he took power – that he had spoken candidly of his Catholic faith to an Italian cleric on a holiday in Tuscany.
‘He asked me to squash a story that he had told the Archbishop of Siena, “In my heart, I feel more of a Catholic,”’ said Mr Price, an ex-Downing Street deputy Press secretary.
‘He said, “I don’t discuss my Catholicism with anybody.” In his heart he was a Roman Catholic throughout the time he was Prime Minister.
'He was worried it would blow up into a much bigger story, with people asking whether he would be beholden to the Vatican because as a Catholic you are supposed to believe that the Pope is infallible.’
As Prime Minister, Mr Blair, whose wife Cherie is a devout Catholic, repeatedly denied rumours that he had converted or planned to do so the moment he left office.
Soon after winning the 1997 Election, Mr Blair started taking Communion regularly at the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral.
In 2004, the Blairs’ family priest Father Timothy Russ told a newspaper that Mr Blair might well convert.
Asked about the report, Mr Blair said: ‘I am saying “no”. Don’t they run this once a year?’ In the event, he waited six months after leaving Downing Street to convert.
Mr Price said there were huge gaps in Mr Blair’s knowledge of Catholicism. ‘We said, “You do realise the heir to the throne can’t marry a Roman Catholic and still go on to be King?”
He was astonished. I thought it was something everyone learned at school.’
Yesterday, Monsignor Gaetano Bonicelli, who retired as Archbishop of Siena in 2001, told of his secret meetings with Mr Blair.
‘He knew a great deal about the Roman Catholic faith and I was not surprised when he converted,’ he said. ‘We saw each other four or five times, maybe more.’
He said he first met Mr Blair after the British consulate rang to say the Prime Minister was on holiday and wanted a Catholic priest to come and say Mass.
He sent a priest to a chapel on the estate where the Blairs were staying because they could not go to the village church for security reasons.
‘Then I was invited to lunch,’ said Monsignor Bonicelli. ‘We discussed faith. I got the inclination straight away that he wanted to convert.”
He said Mr Blair told him it was difficult for a Catholic to be Premier. ‘The priest who took the service told me later that Blair had taken Communion and that he was surprised that in spite of being an Anglican, Blair knew how the Mass worked.
‘I could tell Blair wanted to walk along the path of the Catholic church but he was unable to because of his position. When we met, everything had to be kept very quiet.’
Although there has never been a Catholic Premier, there is no constitutional bar. Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and Liberal Democrat Charles Kennedy are Catholics.
In BBC1’s Christmas Voices today, Mr Blair says he did not convert in office because it would have been ‘a palaver’ and he feared talking about his religious beliefs would lead to people dismissing him as a ‘nutter’.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: DMO)