Following the Protestant Reformation and the Church of England becoming the official church of the country under the reign of Elizabeth I, Catholics were marginalized to the point of lacking full citizenship, having to pay additional taxes, being unable to vote, buy property, practice law, or hold public office, both civil and military, from university rector to prime minister.
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Andy Burnham – the first Catholic to enter 10 Downing Street as such – will not be subject to any of those discriminations, which were eliminated starting with the Emancipation Acts of 1829, but his religion imposes some constitutional limitations, such as that he will not be able to recommend to the king the appointment of bishops and archbishops (this must be done by a member of his Cabinet who professes the Anglican religion).
His political philosophy is influenced by the teachings of the Church and the idea of responsibility
Anyway, that is the least of Burnham’s concerns as he begins his vacation. If anything keeps him awake at night, it is not who will be bishop of Newcastle or Liverpool but where to find the money to finance the reforms he wants to undertake, how to fund the increase in defense spending, care for the elderly, and the construction of housing and infrastructure, whether to raise taxes or not, whether to cut back an out-of-control welfare state that many take advantage of to live off benefits without lifting a finger.
Tony Blair converted to his wife Cherie’s Catholicism once he left Downing Street, because a change of religion while prime minister would have upset the Protestants of Ulster and complicated the negotiations that led to the Good Friday peace agreements; Boris Johnson made the journey in the opposite direction, being baptized Catholic in New York, where he was born, and later adopting the Anglican faith.
Burnham, 56, grew up in Manchester and Liverpool in the seventies and eighties, with a very large community of Irish-origin Catholics who suffered the impact of Thatcher’s deindustrialization and the resulting unemployment. His mother raised him as such, with the values of the social teachings of the Church – individual responsibility, the importance of the common good, fighting injustice and poverty – which have influenced his way of thinking and his political philosophy, although now he is not one to go to mass every Sunday nor consider himself “particularly religious.” Two of his first declared goals are to end homelessness and revolutionize elderly care.
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The new premier talks about the “culture of encounter” (a concept of Pope Francis I) to work with the political opposition in the search for consensual solutions to problems (although it does not seem that either the conservatives or the far right are interested in dialogue).
As a child, when he was an altar boy, Burnham pressed the cassette button in church so that the faithful could listen to the sermon recorded by the priest echoing the encyclicals that followed the Second Vatican Council. As an adult, he visited Rome with his mother, had an audience with Pope Francis, and a brother is the director of a Catholic school.
In Britain in 2026 a Catholic cannot be king, but can be prime minister.
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