‘Catholic by upbringing but not particularly religious’ is how Andy Burnham described his religion to the Huffington Post in 2015. He will be, if he wins the leadership ballot, the first cradle Catholic PM. 

At the annual summer party for the Catholic weekly, The Tablet, its editor, Brendan Walsh, observed that Burnham still goes to mass ‘occasionally’ but that’s about as far as anyone goes to suggest he is actually practicing. His much-quoted observation from a Guardian interview in 2009, that ‘Three things are important in my life, apart from family. Everton FC, the Labour Party and the Catholic church – in that order’ is historic. Now, as in an interview with The Times’ Patrick Maguire, that observation is prefaced by: ‘I used to say…’ 

So you’ll excuse me if I decline to feel even a batsqueak of excitement at the prospect of a lapsed Catholic becoming PM. In theory, Boris Johnson was the first Catholic PM, having been baptised in the faith by his Catholic mother; but even after his third marriage was solemnised in Westminster cathedral (correctly, according to Canon Law) no one ever confused him with a practicing Catholic.  

Burnham is different. His mother Eileen raised him in the faith. He’s an ex-altar boy, and his mother told the Mirror in 2015, ‘You should have seen the fights he and his brothers had on Sundays. They were all altar boys but Andy had to be the one at the front holding the Communion plate.’ So, not just cultural Catholicism, but emphatically part of a Catholic culture. In his interview with the Huffington Post, he observed that ‘if I think of the church of my youth, and the priests that I knew, the feeling and overriding mood was quite forgiving really, quite humane, humorous, irreverent, even the priests.’ 

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