Contrary to conventional wisdom, Catholics are highly influential in the UK and on the rise, with the Prime Minister's number two and a man widely regarded as a future PM featuring prominently on a list of top lay members of the faith by the respected journal The Tablet.
The weekly newspaper's editor, Brendan Walsh, rightly concedes in the introduction to 'The Tablet 100', published this weekend, that there is 'something faintly preposterous' about the concept, but the list – which contains an admirable gender balance – makes for fascinating reading.
Damian Green, the first secretary of state and minister for the Cabinet Office tops the list, which is not confined to politics and includes a wide range of men and women from academia to sports to psychiatry.
And one to watch, at number 19, is the talented chairman of the foreign affairs committee of MPs, Tom Tugendhat, who is widely tipped as a future leader of the country by those in the know at Westminster.
The rightwing, Eurosceptic 'poster boy' Jacob Rees-Mogg, who recently caused a furore in liberal circles by expressing opposition to all abortion including for victims of rape, is higher, at seven — for now.
But even the subject of this summer's 'Moggmania' is, perhaps inevitably, below the editor of the Sun, Tony Gallagher, who's at 6.
Leading the women at second on the list is Baroness (Sheila) Hollins, the crossbench peer who is adviser to Pope Francis on safeguarding and a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Sue Gray, the quietly influential director general of the propriety and ethics team at the cabinet office, features at fourth, with the TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady at number eight and Ruth Hunt, the chief executive at Stonewall coming in tenth, followed by the Rome-based senior nun Jane Livesey, general superior of the Congregation of Jesus. Miriam González Durántez, the lawyer wife of Nick Clegg is 44<sup>th, followed by the news broadcaster Julie Etchingham at 45<sup>th. The highly able palliative care expert Kathryn Mannix, who helped the English and Welsh Catholic Church make the invaluable website The Art of Dying Well last year, is 68<sup>th, and the tenacious former editor of The Tablet itself, Catherine Pepinster, the author of a new book The Keys and The Kingdom, makes the cut too, at 90.
Intriguingly, Tony Blair features together with his wife Cherie, at 30, reflecting what is arguably a fall from grace since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but also a continued influence as he continues to promote an eclectic range of causes including, most vocally, Britain rejecting a hard, or perhaps any, form of Brexit. Cherie Booth, as she is professionally known, is influential in her own right as a barrister and lecturer and the head of a foundation which provides training and support for female entrepreneurs in the developing world.
Ruth Kelly, the thoughtful former Cabinet minister under Blair and pro vice-chancellor for research and enterprise at St Mary's University, Twickenham, is on the list at 76, alongside the influential Vice Chancellor of St Mary's, Francis Campbell, who was the first ever Catholic ambassador to the Vatican, higher up at 40.
For more information about The Tablet's top 100 list visit the paper's Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/TheCatholicTablet/
