British Sources Say Tony Blair Will Convert To Cathoicism

Largely overlooked in the U.S. media are reports out of Britain last week that Tony Blair, who has just resigned as Britain's prime minister, will convert to Catholicism. The Guardian is among those papers reporting on Blair's apparent decision. Blair's wife is Catholic and his children have been raised as Catholics. However, he has held off formal conversion apparently for political reasons. While there is not a specific ban on the prime minister being a Catholic, British law does bar the king or queen from becoming Catholic or marrying a Catholic. Christian Today last week reported that Blair's meeting last Saturday with Pope Benedict XVI was in part in preparation for his conversion. Commenting today on Blair's move, Ireland's Southern Star says that the remaining prohibitions on British monarchs embracing Catholicism, which stem from the 1701 Act of Settlement, violate the European Convention on Human Rights, Sec. I, Art. 9. In an interesting aside, the Southern Star article refers to the Old Bailey website that links to records of over 100,000 trials that took place between 1674 and 1834, including "cases of 'notorious papists' who suffered appalling death sentences for offences such as saying mass."