And lo, but he was tanned. Tony Blair came before us yesterday not as a former Prime Minister but as a man of religion. The Vicar of St Albion is breaking free of his parish chains. He wants God to stop being so parochial. Tony Blair has decided that it’s time that God went global and he’s the man to do it.

He stood, light shining down on his golden face, in Westminster Cathedral almost directly beneath a huge red and gold encrusted cross hanging from the soaring ceiling. He spoke from a wooden pulpit before a congregation (sorry, audience) of hundreds. In the real pulpit, to the side, two TV crews were filming him. Outside, the Blair nonbelievers chanted and whistled. As I walked in a woman screamed like a banshee: “Arrest Tony Blair! This is the House of Satan!” Inside, powerful organ chords drowned out the noise of the nonbelievers. The audience was dotted with turbans, yamakas and robes.

The microphone system went wrong from the start. The audience, unable to hear, began to clap. At first, Mr Blair took them for nonbelievers. I was sitting in the front and so could hear him faintly as he made a mini-plea to be heard. He told us one of his chatty stories about how nonbelievers follow him everywhere now.

“The other day they were chanting ‘Out! Out! Out!’ and I felt like saying to them, actually I’ve gone.”

Someone in the back now bellowed “Can’t hear!”

Mr Blair stopped. “Is the problem you can’t hear?” he asked. “Yes!” shouted the entire back of the cathedral.

Mr Blair looked stunned. “It’s a new thing for me for people to be frustrated because they can’t hear me!”

It was a heartfelt speech, quite different from those he gave as a politician. He used to thrive on conflict and righteousness. “Let me tell you why I’m right,” was his catchphrase.

But yesterday, he renounced conflict. When asked if, as a new Roman Catholic, he would now lead the fight on issues like abortion, he said no, he wouldn’t. He’d fought as a politician for 25 years, now he wanted to find a common path for peace.

Yes it’s peace, not war, for Tony Blair now. He’s forming a foundation that will bring together people from the world’s six major beliefs – Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists – to find common cause to fight, for instance, global poverty. In Blairism, all religions join to work together.

He looked relaxed, less sure of himself, more thoughtful. He’s been out in the cold now for a few months. “I’m not saying for a moment that I know everything,” he said several times. Mr Blair said similar things as PM but no one believed him, not least because he so clearly did know everything. That is no longer the case. He no longer wants to convert, only find common ground.

This was an important speech for Mr Blair, really his coming out speech as a Christian. The politician who did not do God no longer exists. In his place is a man who does God and does God big. But, as a spiritual leader (is Father Blair so unthinkable?) he’s got a way to go: Tony Blair has already got a loyal band of very noisy nonbelievers, now he just needs a few more believers and he’ll be all set.