An interesting piece in the Religion Media Centre, reflected on the arrival of a Catholic, Andy Burnham, as the very likely next UK Prime Minister.
According to the article he is Catholic by family tradition, and last October used the annual Theos lecture to call for a new way of doing politics “with trust, community, faith, belief, connection at his heart”. At the time, the Religion Media Centre reported on the address, which makes interesting reading. You can find it here.
The article also pointed out that, Andy Burnham would probably be the first UK Prime Minister who is a practising Roman Catholic while in office. There have been previous pretenders to this title. Boris Johnson, for instance was baptised a Roman Catholic but confirmed in the Church of England, and didn’t openly practice Catholicism during most of his political career. And Tony Blair was known to be a Catholic, but didn’t openly practise as a Catholic while in power, and in fact only formally converted to Roman Catholicism in December 2007 after stepping down as Prime Minister. And before their time? Well, under the 17th-century penal laws, Roman Catholics were legally barred from holding high political office in the UK, even though the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 made a concession so that they could become MPs.
So an Andy Burnham premiership will be a first. Kaya Burgess, writing in The Times newspaper, just a few days ago, points out that if Andy Burnham becomes PM, as a Catholic he will not be allowed to advise the King on any Church of England bishop and archbishop appointments.
And to be fair to Andy Burnham, as the Times article makes clear, while his mother is Catholic, his children attend Catholic schools, and he says Catholic social teaching underpins his politics, he has always claimed he is “not particularly religious”. We shall see.
Read the main article at the Religion Media Centre here. Read the Kaya Burgess article in The Times here.
Picture above, Andy Burnham, extracted from a picture of meeting with First Minister of Scotland John Swinney in 2024. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.