Sir Keir Starmer says he does not consider in God and US President Donald Trump hardly ever speaks of faith. However each will attend the Pope’s funeral.
In spite of everything, Catholics are the second largest spiritual group in each international locations, with six million within the UK and greater than 50 million within the US.
Right here within the UK, common church going is reported to be up from 8% to 12%, whereas the US president mentioned after Pope Francis’s loss of life “we’re bringing faith again” to America.
Pope Francis at a mass in St Peter’s Sq. earlier this month. Pic: AP
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Politicians – and certainly church leaders – take word.
But Catholics are comparatively under-represented within the Home of Commons, much more so after final 12 months’s Labour landslide when a number of outstanding Catholic Tories have been defeated.
Surprisingly, Boris Johnson was the UK’s first Catholic prime minister, changing after virtually two years in Quantity 10 earlier than marrying his Catholic bride, Carrie Symonds.
Tony Blair, who in his youth was a Durham Cathedral chorister, grew to become a Catholic after leaving Downing Road.
His spouse Cherie is Catholic.
That was regardless of his spin physician Alastair Campbell notoriously telling an interviewer who requested about Mr Blair’s religion: “We do not do God.”
Gordon Brown was famously a “son of the manse” – his father was a Presbyterian minister – and Theresa Could’s father was a Church of England vicar.
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‘Many have been in tears, I used to be in tears’
JD Vance assembly Pope Francis on the Vatican on Easter Sunday. Pic: Vatican Media
One other former prime minister, David Cameron, however, fairly irreverently as soon as described his religion as coming and going “like Magic FM within the Chilterns”.
However regardless of Sir Keir commonly being described as an atheist, two senior members of his cupboard, Training Secretary Bridget Phillipson and Cupboard Workplace minister Pat McFadden, are Catholics.
“For me, being Catholic has at all times been a couple of wider sense of social justice, social motion, the worth and price of each particular person,” Ms Phillipson has mentioned, although she added: “I half firm on points round abortion, contraception…”
Mr McFadden, the son of Irish Catholic dad and mom, paid tribute to the Pope after his loss of life: “Pope Francis served till the very finish, together with this Easter time. Could God relaxation his soul.”
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‘He was the individuals’s pope’
Pope Francis with Giorgia Meloni at a convention in Rome in 2023. Pic: AP
Probably the most overtly spiritual senior Labour minister is the overseas secretary, David Lammy, who has mentioned Jesus Christ was the inspiration for his politics in addition to his lifelong religion.
Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting are practising Anglicans, Jonathan Reynolds chairs a gaggle referred to as Christians on the Left, and Stephen Timms is an evangelical Christian.
Among the many Conservatives, final 12 months’s crushing defeat noticed a number of senior Catholic Tories, together with serving and former cupboard ministers, lose their seats.
The casualties included cupboard ministers Gillian Keegan, Mark Harper, Therese Coffey, Liam Fox, Damian Inexperienced and Jacob Rees-Mogg, together with junior ministers Maria Caulfield and Paul Maynard and senior backbenchers Damian Collins and Daniel Kawczynski.
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Eiffel Tower falls darkish for Pope
That leaves simply the Father of the Home Sir Edward Leigh, former get together chief Sir Iain Duncan Smith, and former cupboard minister Damian Hinds as the one remaining senior Tory Catholics left within the Commons.
Backbencher Danny Kruger, who’s main the combat towards the controversial assisted dying laws, the Terminally Unwell Adults (Finish of Life) Invoice, says he is an evangelical Christian.
For world leaders like Sir Keir and Mr Trump, nonetheless, attending funerals of world statesmen or the nice and the nice is about greater than paying their respects.
They’re a possibility for official or unofficial conferences with different world leaders, recognized within the jargon of worldwide diplomacy as a ‘bilateral’, a ‘brush-by’ or a ‘walk-and-talk’.
So count on loads of these on Saturday.
Learn extra:
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Pope Francis: A life in pictures
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In spite of everything, in addition to Sir Keir and the US president, the leaders of France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Poland, the European Fee and certainly Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy have already introduced they are going.
It might be one of many largest gatherings of world leaders outdoors an official G7, G20, EU or different worldwide summit.
So, in fact, Sir Keir and President Trump can be there.
