Blair has converted because he is preparing to take on the role as head of the EU.
LONDON (AFP) — Former British prime minister Tony Blair has become a Roman Catholic, church officials said Saturday, ending widespread speculation that he would switch to the faith of his wife and four children.
But as Catholic leaders welcomed Blair into the fold, immediate questions were raised about whether the 54-year-old had now renounced his views on contentious areas like abortion, gay rights and stem-cell research.
A spokesman for the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, said Blair had been “received into full communion with the Catholic Church” at a private mass on Friday night.
Murphy O’Connor, who took the ceremony, praised Blair’s conversion.
“For a long time he has been a regular worshipper at mass with his family and in recent months he has been following a programme of formation to prepare for his reception into full communion,” he said.
“My prayers are with him, his wife and family at this joyful moment in their journey of faith together.”
Vatican spokesman Frederico Lombardi said: “Catholics are glad to welcome into their community someone who has followed a serious and reflective path towards Catholicism.”
The leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, also wished Blair well.
Blair’s conversion from Anglicanism had been expected. He had been described as “a Catholic in all but name”, regularly attending Catholic mass with his wife, Cherie, and only going to Anglican services on state occasions.
One of his last acts as premier was to visit Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, fuelling speculation that a switch was imminent.
But converting earlier could have been tricky, with his role in peace talks between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, his government’s legislation on same-sex partnerships and his role appointing Church of England bishops.
Lawmaker Ann Widdecombe, from the main opposition Conservative Party, who became a Catholic in 1993, said being received into the faith meant stating publicly: “I believe everything the Church teaches to be revealed truth.”
“And that means if you previously had any problems with Church teaching, as Tony Blair obviously did over abortion, as he did again over Sunday trading… you would have to say you changed your mind,” she told Sky News television.
“And I think people will want to know that he did go through that process, because otherwise it will seem as if the church did make an exception for somebody just because of who he is.”
John Smeaton, head of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said he would be writing to Blair to ask whether he has “repented of the anti-life positions” he advocated during his political career.
“During his premiership Tony Blair became one of the world’s most significant architects of of the culture of death, promoting abortion, experimentation on unborn embryos, including cloned embryos, and euthanasia by neglect,” he added.
The extent of Blair’s religious faith and how far it influenced his political decision-making was of regular interest in Britain, although his former spokesman, Alastair Campbell, once told reporters: “We don’t do God.”
Blair was once asked by an interviewer whether he prayed with US President George W. Bush and appeared to suggest in another interview that he would be judged by a higher power for his controversial backing of the 2003 Iraq war.
In a recent BBC television documentary on Blair’s premiership, Campbell said his former boss “does do God in quite a big way” but both men feared overt religiosity would not play well with voters.
Blair told the same programme the British electorate would likely see any politician who wore his religion on his sleeve as a “nutter”.