LONDON - Six months after stepping down as Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair has completed his long-expected conversion to Roman Catholicism from Britain's established church, Anglicanism, Catholics officials said in a statement Saturday.
Blair, now a Middle East envoy, was received into the Catholic Church during a Mass held Friday night at a chapel in the residence of the leading Catholic in Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the statement said.
Blair's convent-educated wife, Cherie, and four children are Catholics, and Blair for many years had made a practice of attending Mass with them, saying he did so to keep his family together on Sundays.
Blair had faced concerns within the Catholic hierarchy in London and Rome, centering on policies adopted by his government during his 10 years in power that drew fierce criticism from the conservative hierarchy of the church. Among these were the Blair government's support for stem cell research, gay adoptions and the legalization of gay civil unions.
In an interview for a BBC documentary, "The Blair Years," Blair acknowledged the importance of his religious beliefs in guiding his years as prime minister and also the care he had taken not to talk about those beliefs in public.
"You know, if I am honest about it, yes of course it was hugely important," he said. "You know you can't have a religious faith and it be an insignificant aspect because it's profound about you and about you as a human being."
But he added that although politicians could speak freely about their faith in the United States, it was hard to do so in Britain, "because frankly people do think you are a nutter."
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