Lance Price, who was a Downing Street spokesman, recalled that, a year after being elected, Mr Blair asked him to ''squash'' a report that he had told the Archbishop of Siena ''in my heart I feel more of a Catholic''.

Mr Price told the Today program on BBC Radio 4 that Mr Blair had told him, ''I don't discuss my Catholicism with anybody.'' He went on, ''I thought what he meant to say was, 'I don't discuss my Christianity with anybody.' But looking back, I think, in his heart he was a Roman Catholic throughout the time that he was prime minister.'' Mr Price was commenting on a program to be shown on BBC1 yesterday in which the former prime minister appears to express regret that he was not more open about his religion while at No10. In an interview for Christmas Voices, Mr Blair says, ''It would have caused such a palaver if I had done it while I was still in office.'' But he admits most people would not have minded. ''Probably we could have been a little more adventurous on this without bringing the house down.''

Mr Blair, whose wife is a Catholic and whose children have been brought up in the faith, was received into the Church last December. Independent