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UK Bill Aims to Lift Restrictions on Catholic and Jewish Prime Ministers
Confirmed
In Short: A new bill seeks to remove historic restrictions that barred Catholic and Jewish prime ministers from advising the monarch on Church of England appointments.
A new bill in the UK aims to lift restrictions that have historically barred Catholic and Jewish prime ministers from advising the monarch on Church of England appointments. The Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill, steered through the Commons by Labour MP Lauren Edwards, would allow Catholic and Jewish prime ministers to provide such advice.
According to the UK government, amendments were brought into law in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to remove restrictions on Catholic and Jewish people in public life, but the restriction related to advising on Church appointments was left in place.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a Catholic, has had to transfer this responsibility to the lord chancellor since coming to power on July 20. The bill, if passed, would move to a further committee stage where amendments will be considered.
Campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen, who has terminal cancer, has urged MPs to back the bill, saying she has become too unwell to travel abroad for an assisted death as she once planned. However, Labour’s Ashley Dalton says the bill still does not do enough to protect vulnerable people from being pressured into ending their lives.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is expected to vote against the bill again, saying the scrutiny process in the Lords should not be written off as obstruction.
What's confirmed
- Ireland became an independent Roman Catholic-majority nation a century ago, but a six-county region in the north with a Protestant majority remained part of the United Kingdom.
- The region faced three decades of violence as Protestant unionists, who wanted to stay British, fought with Catholic nationalists, who wanted to be unified with Ireland.
What's still developing
- A U.K. bill may soon change historic law, an inquiry into the death of a Catholic father in Ireland concludes, Asian digital missionaries urged to be responsible, and more in this world news roundup.
- An inquiry in Ireland has found that four Royal Ulster Constabulary officers “did not collude” with attackers who assaulted a 25-year-old Catholic father of three in 1997 in County Armagh, according to a report in RTÉ.
- In her plenary address at the Asian Catholic Digital Missionary Assembly 2026 in Manila, Philippines, on Sept.
- While meeting with Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin in Dublin, Trump said he supported the unification of Ireland with Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.
- It is being steered through the Commons by Labour MP Lauren Edwards, who says delay is costing dying patients dearly, and follows an earlier version of the bill that passed the Commons last year before stalling in the House of Lords under the weight of more than a thousand proposed amendments.
- Prime Minister Andy Burnham insisted last month that a unity referendum was "off the table," drawing a sharp response from the pro-unity party Sinn Féin.
- The Catholic Church needs an “independent ecclesiastical commission” to evaluate bishops’ ad limina visits.
- Reopening marks end of temporary restrictions that included age limit, online registration Dubai: Two of Dubai's largest Catholic churches have announced a full reopening, allowing parishioners to once again participate in all church activities after temporary restrictions introduced earlier this year.