BRITAIN:Tony Blair's long-expected conversion to Roman Catholicism will draw a significant step closer with today's private audience with Pope Benedict at the Vatican.
Inter-faith issues, the Middle East and the environment are on the formal agenda for the departing British prime minister's meeting with the pontiff during Mr Blair's third visit to the Vatican in four years. However, the real interest is in the conclusion of Mr Blair's long spiritual journey and his apparent decision to finally join the church to which his wife, Cheri, and their four children already belong.
Commentators in Rome were last night weighing the significance of the fact that Mr Blair has chosen Rome and a visit to the Pope for his last official overseas outing. Many argue he would want to announce his long-expected conversion to Catholicism only after meeting Pope Benedict.
Another view is that as he prepares himself for a post-prime ministership future, perhaps linked to various international organisations, a photo-opportunity with the German pontiff will do him no harm. What seems certain, however, is that whatever he may say to Pope Benedict during his closed doors audience this morning, Mr Blair is unlikely to make any announcement about his conversion in Rome.
It is unclear whether Mr Blair will tell the pope of his intentions, or seek his approval, during the audience at which he is thought likely to formally invite the pontiff to visit the United Kingdom. One well-placed Whitehall source last night told The Irish Times: "There is clearly a direction of travel, but whether we've arrived - who knows?"
Mr Blair is not expected to meet the media after his audience, thus confirming the impression that any announcement about his conversion to Catholicism may be delayed until he has left Downing Street.
At the EU summit Mr Blair's official spokesman also maintained the line that today's visit to Rome was "entirely a private matter" and not a subject for comment by Downing Street.
After his audience with Pope Benedict, the prime minister will attend a lunch hosted by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, in Rome's Venerable English College. This will be his first visit to the college, which has down the decades trained Catholic priests for a difficult return to Protestant England, a return that in some cases resulted in a martyr's death.
This will not, however, be Mr Blair's first visit to a seminary college in Rome. IFebruary 2003, when he was in Rome for crucial pre-Iraq invasion meetings with then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and the late Pope John Paul II, Mr Blair surprised many by opting to stay at the Irish Pontifical College. That visit had come about because the Blairs had got to know the rector of the Irish College, Monsignor Liam Bergin, after hearing him preach at Westminster Cathedral, and because the Irish College offered a safe location.
DUP sources in Belfast yesterday indicated a firm belief that Mr Blair's decision "to turn to Rome" was now "a matter beyond speculation".
And in a sign of markedly changed attitudes, not just in Britain but also in Northern Ireland, Stormont junior minister Ian Paisley said he did not wish to comment on "Mr Blair's personal religious choice". He also made clear that his father, Northern Ireland First Minister Rev Ian Paisley, would not be commenting either on this predicted milestone development in the life of the still-serving prime minister.
It is known that Mr Blair and Dr Paisley have discussed matters of faith on the margins of the Northern Ireland peace process.
There has been no legal impediment to a Roman Catholic prime minister in Britain since Catholic emancipation in 1828-1829. And two putative alternative prime ministers, Iain Duncan Smith and Charles Kennedy, both Catholics, have served respectively as leaders of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats during Mr Blair's 10-year-term.
In that time Mr Blair has regularly joined his wife and children at Catholic services, often appearing at the 5.30pm Saturday evening service at Westminster Cathedral until forced to make alternative arrangements because of security concerns. He is believed to routinely attend services when abroad and has also attended the Immaculate Heart of Mary at Great Missenden, the nearest Catholic Church to his Chequers country retreat.
The former Archbishop of Westminster, the late Cardinal Basil Hume, once wrote to Mr Blair, while he was still opposition leader, requesting that he stop taking Communion at his wife's church in Islington, because he was not a Catholic.
Mr Blair was reportedly "bemused" by this edict and in turn asked the Cardinal "what Jesus would have made of it".
According to yesterday's Guardiannewspaper, Mr Blair has been prepared for the next step in his spiritual life by a Royal Air Force chaplain, Fr John Walsh, who has been quietly slipping into Chequers to say Mass for the Blair family for the past four years.