Portrait of the Week – 1 March 2003

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said, in an emergency statement to the House of Commons on Iraq, that 100 per cent co-operation by Saddam Hussein was necessary, and ‘anything less will not do’. A day’s debate followed in the Lords and Commons, where many Labour members were prepared to vote against the government. Mr Blair had visited the Pope in the company of his wife, and became the first serving prime minister to attend a papal Mass. At the General Synod of the Church of England, on the eve of the enthronment of Dr Rowan Williams as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, prayers were offered for the British Prime Minister, the President of the United States, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government. The Most Revd David Hope, the Archbishop of York, said that Ash Wednesday, 5 March, should be a day of fasting and prayer ‘for all those caught up in the crisis’; the Pope had made a similar call.