New Delhi, July 17 -- Burnham, who was born and raised in the Roman Catholic faith and sends his three children to Catholic schools, becomes the first practicing Catholic to hold the office of prime minister in more than 470 years, a succession interrupted by the English Reformation that removed Catholicism from the centre of English public life in the 1530s.

he has described it as part of a working-class northern identity that he grew up in and has never set aside, NBC News reported.

Burnham, 56, earned the nickname "King of the North" through three consecutive victories in Greater Manchester's mayoral elections, where he built a record on transport, public services, and a politics explicitly positioned outside London's economic gravit...