Boris Johnson was Britain’s first Catholic prime minister, but he said virtually nothing about his religious convictions, and it is unknown if he practises his faith.
Thérèse Coffey is a different matter. The new deputy prime minister and health secretary is a practising Catholic who takes her faith seriously and is considered one of prime minister Liz Truss’s closest political allies.
“I don’t know that I wear my religion on my sleeve, but it is undoubtedly part of who I am,” she told Sky News in June 2022. “There are issues that get decided in parliament — great ethical issues of the day — and so, of course, I’ll participate in that.”
Ms Coffey is from the northwest of England, the traditional Catholic heartland of England and Wales. She was born in Lancashire and educated at Catholic schools, including St Mary’s, Crosby, and St Edward’s College, Liverpool.
Both of them are prominent Catholic education institutions with St Mary’s alumni including Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, and Lord Birt, the former director-general of the BBC. St Edward’s former pupils include Sir Terry Leahy, the former chief executive of Tesco and two Labour members of parliament: Peter Kilfoyle, who was MP for Liverpool Walton 1991-2010, and Dan Carden, who was elected to the same seat in 2017. Both St Mary’s and St Edward’s were once grammar schools for boys run by the Christian Brothers but today are co-educational. St Edward’s is a state-funded academy while St Mary’s became an independent school in the mid-1970s and was independent when Ms Coffey attended from 1986 to 1988.
Writing in The Tablet, Ms Coffey explained that the science teachers at her schools, one of them a priest known as Fr Mac (Fr McCarthy), gave her a love of chemistry which she studied at university. She singled out Mr Haimes, who taught her physics at St Edward’s, as “the most influential teacher in my life” who encouraged her in “listening, checking understanding and reinforcing”, something she says has stayed with her.
After a short period at Somerville College, Oxford, she studied chemistry at University College, London and later completed a doctorate in the subject. She reportedly dedicated her doctoral thesis to her parents in between the initials AMDG and LDS. The initials stand for ad maiorem dei gloriam “for the greater glory of God” and laus deo sempe and “praise to God always” and are commonly associated with the Jesuit educational tradition. The Jesuits, of which Pope Francis is a member, are a global Catholic religious order, officially titled the Society of Jesus: they run schools and universities worldwide.
Ms Coffey’s career saw her work as finance director at Mars Drinks UK, a subsidiary of the US confectionery multinational, and as a property finance manager at the BBC. She was elected as the Conservative MP for Suffolk Coastal in 2010 and, while in parliament, has taken positions against abortion and same-sex marriage.
A few months after taking her seat, she put an early day motion before the House of Commons calling for the government to provide mental health assessments and professional counselling for women who present themselves for abortions on mental health grounds. She also supported attempts to reduce the time limit for abortions to 12 weeks. In 2013, she voted against same-sex marriage legislation and was among a group of MPs who urged the House of Lords to reject attempts by the government to “redefine marriage”.
While she opposes abortion, Ms Coffey has insisted that she does not plan to seek to change the laws on abortion as health secretary, saying the law on the matter is “settled”. However, the official position of the Catholic Church is that Catholic politicians must not support abortion laws and should take measures to restrict them. In the United States, some bishops have tried to bar Catholic politicians, including President Joe Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, from receiving communion because of their support for abortion legislation.
While Ms Coffey has stood against abortion and same-sex marriage, the government she serves in appears at odds with Pope Francis regarding economics and the environment. Ms Truss, who has supported scrapping green levies, concerned environmentalists with her appointment of Jacob Rees-Mogg as business secretary. He, who like Ms Coffey is a practising Catholic, has argued that “climate alarmism” is responsible for high energy prices. In contrast, the Pope has made protecting the environment a central part of this pontificate.
The economic policy of Ms Truss’s government also runs counter to Francis’s vision. The Pope has repeatedly criticised “trickle-down” economics, the theory that tax breaks and other incentives for big business and the wealthy eventually will benefit the rest of society through investment and job creation. Raymond Friel, the chief executive of the Catholic Social Action Network for England and Wales, described chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s recent mini-budget as “unjust”.
Some believe that, like the business secretary, Ms Coffey is a Catholic with traditionalist leanings. At the time of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, she released a video on Twitter singing the Domine salvum fac, a Latin chant in honour of a monarch which was sung in France during the Ancien Régime and later in honour of the Queen by Catholics in Quebec and England. It was also sung at traditionalist Latin masses.
Nevertheless, Ms Coffey’s enjoyment of karaoke, cigars, and champagne suggests she instinctively understands that a Catholic understanding of the world seeks to affirm the good things in life as fruits of divine abundance. As the writer Hilaire Belloc put it: “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. Benedicamus Domino! [Let us bless the Lord].”
