Fr. James Martin urges JD Vance to emulate UK’s pro-abortion prime minister
Fr. James Martin wants US Vice President JD Vance to study Andy Burnham, who famously declared that ‘I’m a gay-rights, feminist, football-loving Catholic kind of guy.’
British Prime Minister
Andy Burnham Leon Neal/Getty Images
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Thu Sep 17, 2026 - 3:32 pm EDT
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(LifeSiteNews) — Father James Martin took to social media to advise U.S. Vice President JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism, to study Britain’s new “Catholic” prime minister who has been an ardent supporter of abortion, assisted dying, same-sex “marriage,” and puberty blockers for gender-confused teens.
The Catholic politician whom Martin wants Vance to emulate is Andy Burnham, who replaced Keir Starmer in July.
Burnham has famously admitted, “I’m a gay-rights, feminist, football-loving Catholic kind of guy.”
He has also said that he was made by “Everton Football Club, the Labour Party and the Catholic Church” – “in that order,” according to a report by Premiere Christianity before he took office.
The Jesuit priest posted a New York Times opinion piece by guest essayist David Gibson, headlined, “JD Vance, Here’s a Catholic Politician You Should Get to Know,” signaling his agreement with the Times writer.
“Britain’s new prime minister is exactly the kind of Catholic that America needs,” Gibson declared at the outset of his piece.
“That might sound odd, especially given that Mr. Burnham was raised Catholic but rarely attends Mass and leads the center-left party in one of the West’s least churchgoing nations,” Gibson continued. “But Mr. Burnham’s Catholicism is still central to who he is as a leader, and it informs his approach to policy, which is oriented toward the common good rather than culture wars.”
Gibson, and by extension Martin, believes that the Catholic Church should be less faithful in its teachings concerning “divisive social issues such as the legal status of gay rights or abortion.”
“The British prime minister may not be the ideal Catholic,” Gibson allowed, adding that “he ought to be seen as a helpful corrective to an American Catholicism that often sees the faith less as a way of life and more as an avenue to an argument.”
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