I seem to remember reading (possibly in the London Review of Books) that the Johnson family are Catholics, but that with his customary lack of care, BJ accidentally became an Anglican by inadvertently being confirmed as one while at Eton.
Drawing on the remnants of what was impressed on my infant mind at the hands of the Sisters of Mercy (big misnomer, that one!) I don’t think one can actually stop being a Catholic, except by papal excommunication, instead one can only ‘lapse’. Of course, that might have changed in the past sixty years or so; I remember a recent pope scrapping Limbo and maybe by now Purgatory’s gone too. Things certainly done seem to be what they were in the eternal and unchanging afterlife. And has Hell moved to America?
Boris Johnson was born a RC (his mother) and baptised into the RC faith, he later renounced it when he married Allergra Mostyn-Owen (now a muslim), his latest son has been baptised in the RC faith since Carrie Symonds is a practising RC.
As I implied above one can call oneself an atheist (and I do!) and cease to believe in any form of afterlife, but you can’t renounce Catholicism and ‘stop’ being a Catholic in the eyes of the Church anymore than one can ‘stop’ being Jewish. Mention of which leads to why this isn’t merely being pedantic, as although GB had its first Jewish PM over a century and a half ago, the C17th Act of Settlement that prevented the monarch from being a Catholic also forbade one from becoming PM. See:-
It’s also interesting in the context of Blair marrying a Catholic, attending mass every Sunday at Brompton Oratory during his premiership, but delaying his conversion until just after he stepped down as PM.
As I understand it it is only Clerics in the Church of England that are empowered to legally marry couples.
Anyone undergoing a religious ceremony other than that undertaken in a Church of England church or by a formally recognised Registrar needs to have their marriage regularised.
From your own post, on the 22nd February 2014 he was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Francis.
The photograph shows him wearing the scarlet of a Cardinal, not the purple of a Bishop.
I tried to get away with that one with my then girlfriend’s parents but they saw straight through it. Luckily as in-laws 30 years later it has all worked out well.
well, that doesn’t make him any the less the Arch Bishop of Westminster, he is answerable directly to the Monarch of the UK because Westminster Cathedral is a Royal Peculiar.
@Daddo
I think you are getting confused…
Westminster Abbey is a Royal Peculiar (and an Anglican Church) but Westminster Cathedral is a Catholic Church, governed by Cardinal Vincent Nichols following his elevation to the College of Cardinals as outlined by @Jane_Williamson in 2014. The two buildings are entirely separate institutions - one in the control of the Crown as head of the Anglican Church as Supreme Governor, the other by the Bishop of Rome aka The Pope. The buildings are 400m apart from each other.
but to each his own.