If Tony Blair becomes a Catholic this month, he will be the latest high-profile convert to have Fr Michael Seed as his spiritual adviser. Ben Quinnmeets the 'Scarlet Pimpernel' priest in Westminster Cathedral.
It was Tony Blair's formidable former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, who famously said "We don't do God", after one journalist had the temerity to ask about the prime minister's Christianity. For long a subject of speculation, the faith of the man who sent Britain to war with Iraq was especially fascinating in the context of his partnership with the deeply religious US President.
More than four months have passed since Blair's departure from Downing Street, and yet the speculation is as intense as ever, with a respected Catholic newspaper recently reporting that he will convert to Catholicism this month.
While no serving British prime minister has ever been a Catholic, the nearest thing was Blair's attendance, with his Catholic wife and children, at Masses said at Downing Street by Fr Michael Seed. When that highly symbolic conversion eventually takes place - and most commentators believe it will - the special role of the London-based priest with an Irish connection will be remembered, along with that of a small coterie of other clergy.
"We call him the 'Scarlet Pimpernel'," chuckles one of the nuns who helps to run the beating heart of British Catholicism, Westminster Cathedral, as I wait to meet the 50-year-old Franciscan friar and unofficial Catholic chaplain to the House of Commons.
The nun's sobriquet is not the only one that has been applied to Fr Seed: he is often referred to in the media as the "priest to the stars" because of his closeness to politicians, royals, writers and many household names.
The tag causes the quietly spoken cleric to cringe and is a world away from his role as ecumenical adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Still, Fr Seed's "string of celebrity scalps" - as some news reports have described his reputed conversions - is impressive. The Conservative MPs John Gummer and Ann Widdecombe are among those he prepared to become Catholics, and he is rumoured to have converted the former MP Alan Clark on his deathbed.
Another measure of his connections is the list of famous names who have contributed to his books, the proceeds of which go to charity. It includes Hillary Clinton, the Duchess of Kent, Jilly Cooper, Sean Connery, John le Carré and the Dalai Lama. Fr Seed has been listed in Who's Who - his recreational interests were given as "politicians, pizza and Zwinglianism" - while his portrait has been painted by the royal artist, Christian Furr. Unsurprisingly, Fr Seed remains tight-lipped on the subject of Blair.
AS FOR THE suggestion that he has played a major role in converting a roll-call of famous people, he says: "Look - all these works are God's works. I couldn't personally give a hoot if someone decides to become a Baptist, a Catholic or an Anglican. There is no monopoly on salvation and no monopoly on holiness."
During a conversation in his little office behind the cathedral, he does concede that there has been a perception in certain quarters of British society that Catholicism is somehow "exotic". "The great problem is that Catholicism has been immensely and deeply sexy, naughty even, and the idea that all Catholics are thinking of blowing up Parliament. It's sexy in the sense of being a Goth."
The smells, traditions and richness of heritage associated with Catholic ceremony has attracted others, while Fr Seed laughs fondly as he recounts how Widdecombe was received into the church. "She is known in Parliament as 'the Popessa'," he says affectionately.
"When she became a Catholic she added things to the ceremony. You are only meant to say one sentence, along the lines that you believe in the holy Catholic Church. But Ann then went on to say more, such as that she believes in the magisterium, the teachings of the Pope and all his successors." Widdecombe, an outspoken supporter of traditional family values who has taken to Catholicism with gusto, has said publicly that Blair should make a public statement renouncing his previous support for abortion if he joins the church.
When asked about this, Fr Seed mentions he spoke to Widdecombe about the issue recently, but declines to say whether he agrees with her, adding only that it is a personal matter for the former prime minister.
HOWEVER, FR SEED is more definitive on the issue of whether Catholic politicians should vote in accordance with their religious beliefs on issues such as abortion.
"I think for Catholics in public office, one of the marks of a Christian, of any human being, is the preservation of life in all its forms. I would expect our public figures to be pro the giving of birth. Having said that, I am not going to alienate or ostracise them. I would say: 'We forgive the sin and love the sinner'."
His take on another controversial issue - that of adoption by gay couples - might come as a surprise, though. "My plea is for the preservation of having always a mother and a father in relation to babies and young children," he says, stressing that it would be unusual for a mother giving up a baby to a Catholic adoption agency not to assume that the adoptive parents would be a male and a female. But he concedes that there is no reason to believe a 14 year-old could not be raised by two men.
Such a view, which differs from more orthodox Catholic positions on adoption, is informed by Fr Seed's own upbringing. "I am the product of an entirely male upbringing," he says. "I was put into care with a male social worker, went to an entirely male school with male staff. Am I any different for it? Can two men adopt? The answer is yes when it comes to the later development, which I consider to be above 14, but the ideal scenario is a mother and a father."
The story of Fr Seed's early life is harrowing. He was taken into care after he was beaten and sexually abused by his adoptive father from the age of about three. His adoptive mother ended her own life when he was eight.
By the middle of his teenage years he was beginning to know happiness through art, assisted by one particularly inspiring teacher. After leaving school in 1974 with just one O Level - his studies had been hampered by dyslexia - he drifted through a handful of jobs before working at a home for people with mental illness.
BY THAT TIME, a spiritual curiosity had dawned. He tried out different churches, including the Church of England as well as the Strict and Particular Baptists sect ("we made Ian Paisley look like a dangerous liberal"), before finally joining the Catholic Church at the age of 18.
After entering the Franciscan order, The Friars of Atonement, in 1979, he was ordained as a priest in 1986 before becoming ecumenical officer for the Archdiocese of Westminster in 1988.
His embrace of the Catholic Church was something of a homecoming. At the age of 16, he had learnt that Joe and Lillian Seed had not been his real parents and that he had been given up for adoption by a 16-year-old Irish girl six months after his birth in Manchester, after he had been baptised as a Catholic in December 1957.
He says: "My Irish origins are to some extent mythical in the sense that, to this point, I have never met my natural mother. I was conceived in 1956 and born in 1957. I do know that she was 16 when she had me and I know that my natural father was 16." The fragments of his life history were picked up as a result of a chance conversation with a nun, Sr Philomena, who worked for the Catholic Diocese of Salford at the home run by the Crusade of Rescue. She had met Fr Seed's natural mother, Marie, and she told him that his mother had been Irish, although this apparently was something she said of all babies in order to protect their mothers' identities.
Whatever about the reality of his Irish roots, Fr Seed later found himself living briefly in Cork while studying for the priesthood, and retains a fondness for the Irish church, praising its role in spreading Christianity around the world.
As for the successive problems faced by the church in Ireland over recent decades, he is quick to express his admiration for its bishops. However, while praising their resistance to populist imagery or "silly things", he summons the example of another unconventional and well-known priest to illustrate one of the Irish clergy's strengths.
"I am a great fan of Father Ted," he says, talking about the fictional television character who has not always impressed traditional Catholics. "And what the Irish Church provides is a wonderful Father Ted sense of humour. People adore it."