Britain’s King Charles and Pope Leo XIV prayed together in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel on Thursday, in the first joint worship including an English monarch and a Catholic pontiff since King Henry VIII broke away from Rome in 1534.
Latin chants and English prayers echoed through the chapel, where Leo was elected the first U.S. pope by the world’s Catholic cardinals six months ago in front of frescoes by Michelangelo depicting Christ delivering the Last Judgment.
Charles, supreme governor of the Church of England, was seated at the Pope’s left near the altar of the chapel as Leo and Anglican Archbishop Stephen Cottrell led a service that featured the Sistine Chapel Choir and two royal choirs.
Although Charles has met the last three popes, and Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI also travelled to Britain, their previous encounters never included joint prayers.
Charles and Queen Camilla also had a private meeting with Leo on Thursday morning.
‘A healing of history’
The King and Queen Camilla’s visit had actually been planned for earlier this year but was rescheduled after Pope Francis got sick and then died.
Charles had strongly wanted to visit the Vatican during the 2025 Holy Year, a once-every-quarter-century celebration of Christianity. The visit solidifies closer ties between the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion, five centuries after their turbulent separation.
“There is a strong sense that this moment in the extraordinary setting of the Sistine Chapel offers a kind of healing of history,” Anglican Rev. James Hawkey, canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, told Reuters.
“This would have been impossible just a generation ago,” he said. “It represents how far our churches have come over the last 60 years of dialogue.”
Cottrell, the Anglican Archbishop of York, stood in at the Sistine Chapel service for Sarah Mullally. She was recently announced as the first woman to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, but will not take the role until next year.
The King will travel in the afternoon to Rome’s Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, one of Catholicism’s four most venerated churches, where Leo has approved giving him a new title of “Royal Confrater,” or brother, at the connected abbey.
Charles will also be gifted a special seat in the apse of the basilica. The wooden chair, reserved in the future for use only by British monarchs, is decorated with the king’s coat of arms and the ecumenical motto “Ut unum sint” (That they may be one).
Bishop Anthony Ball, the official Anglican representative to the Vatican, said the honours “show the commitment that both of our Churches have to working for a shared future.”
Buckingham Palace announced on Thursday that Charles had also approved two British honours for Leo: making him the “Papal Confrater” of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle and conferring on him the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.
Split during Henry VIII reign
The Church of England is one of 46 autonomous churches across some 165 countries that together form the Anglican Communion.
The Catholic Church, which has 1.4 billion members, and the Anglican Communion, with 85 million members, have been improving their ties since the 1960s.
The teachings of the two traditions align on many major issues, but the Catholic Church does not ordain women and generally does not allow priests to marry.
The split between the Catholic Church and the Church of England was formalized in 1534, after Pope Clement VII refused to annul King Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Henry’s desire for a male heir — and a new wife who might provide one — was the immediate catalyst, but other factors were also at play, involving the English crown’s seizure of church assets and the growth of Protestant ideas in England.
As England swung between Catholicism and Protestantism during the reigns of Henry’s daughters Mary I and Elizabeth I, hundreds of Catholics and Protestants were executed for their faith, often burned at the stake.
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