Blair to launch Faith Foundation

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former Prime Minister Tony Blair will launch a Faith Foundation on Friday that he said aims to improve understanding between different religions and fight global poverty by mobilizing people through faith.

"Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century," Blair said in a statement before Friday's launch in New York.

"In an era of globalization, there is nothing more important than getting people of different faiths and cultures to understand each other better and live in peace and mutual respect," he said.

Blair, who converted to Catholicism in December after stepping down as prime minister in June, was often reticent about his faith during his 10 years in power in Britain, where religion and politics rarely mix.

Time magazine, which published an interview with Blair on Thursday, said the foundation aimed to build up a "war chest" of several hundred million dollars to fund projects to fight global poverty, such as an anti-malaria campaign.

It aims to support the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, a set of targets adopted by world leaders in 2000 to reduce hunger and halve extreme poverty.

"Tony Blair has argued that faith has to be rescued from those who would use it to divide and those determined to write it off as an irrelevance," the statement from his office said.

"By stressing the values of respect, justice and compassion which the great religions hold in common, he believes faith can help unite the world and shape its direction for the better."