A Franciscan from Međugorje kept the Secret
By Zvonimir Despot & Velimir Begić

As the term of office of the British Prime Minister was drawing to a close, the media were doing their best to discover whether he intended to convert from the Anglican into the Roman Catholic faith. It was, perhaps, illusionary to expect such a move while he remained in power in a country whose state religion was the Anglican Church. Yet Blair encouraged the speculation by choosing to visit the Vatican and meet Pope Benedict XVI on one of his last tours in office. The belief was that he spoke personally to the Pope about the issue.

Priest Timothy

Blair has been viewed as being extremely close to the Roman Catholic Church for some time. It is not insignificant to mention that his wife, Cherie, is an active Catholic whom he met while studying at Oxford, and that they underwent an Ecumenical Matrimony in the Anglican Church with the approval of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, their four children were baptised into the Catholic Church.

Blair regularly attended Holy Masses celebrated by a Catholic priest in the Church of the Sinless Heart of Mary in Great Missenden, adjacent to the village of Chequers where the Blairs have a country house. That very priest, Timothy Russ, was the first to launch the story about Blair’s religious conversion, but would not say if Blair was taking Holy Communion at the Catholic Masses.
When the media took up the story and began to investigate it, the priest’s claim was related to a previously written letter of the then Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume. In this, he was said to have asked the British Prime Minister, in 1996, to cease taking Holy Communion at the Catholic Mass in Chequers, continuing that he did not object to his taking Communion during vacation since there was no Anglican church nearby.

The letter came after journalists claimed that Blair had taken Catholic Holy Communion in public for the first time at the beginning of that year during his stay in Cusona, Italy, offending the local priests who asked the Vatican to take appropriate action on the matter. Similarily, British Anglicans also were reported as being disapproving of their Prime Minister's taking Holy Communion at a Roman Catholic Mass.

Blair obeyed the Cardinal's request, but also stated clearly that he did not agree with such a decision, and challenged the authority of the Church in a sentence frequently quoted afterwards: ˝¨I wonder what Jesus would have said or done in this place.˝

The full article can be found on pages 18-21 of Vol 3
2007 issue.