Blair, the Pope and the Iraq War

I imagine many of us would have liked to be a fly on the wall at Tony Blair’s pre-conversion Confession, not least to know if he now counts the Iraq War amongst his sins. Before the 2003 hostilities, he sought God’s guidance, we are told. Did he receive a message from on high telling him to smite all of Mesopotamia? That certainly was not the advice he was getting from the then Pope, John Paul II, with whom Mr Blair had a private audience in February 2003. On that occasion, the Pontiff made it abundantly clear that any war launched against Iraq would be ‘a defeat for humanity’. But of course, Mr Blair wasn’t a Catholic at the time (even if he was caught out and reprimanded by Cardinal Basil Hulme illegitimately taking Mass at Westminster Cathedral). So that’s alright then.