Royal Catholic funeral for Duchess of Kent

The funeral of the Duchess of Kent will be held at Westminster Cathedral on 16 September, with the King and Queen among the senior royals who will be in attendance, Buckingham Palace has announced.

The duchess, Katharine, died on Thursday aged 92, prompting tributes for her kindness and support for tennis and music – including working as a primary school music teacher.

The duchess was a Catholic and there will be a Requiem Mass for her funeral, which will be the first royal Catholic funeral in the UK in modern history.

It will be a private family service, after which the coffin will be taken to the royal burial ground in Frogmore in Windsor.

The duchess, who had been the oldest member of the Royal Family, died in Kensington Palace and her coffin will remain in the chapel there until the evening before the funeral, when she will be brought to Westminster Cathedral.

In the Catholic tradition, there will be a service to mark the reception of the coffin into the cathedral, attended by her close family, with the duchess being survived by her husband, the Duke of Kent, and their two sons and a daughter.

The coffin will remain in the Lady Chapel overnight, before the funeral the following day.

This first royal funeral at Westminster Cathedral, at 2pm on Tuesday 16 September, will be presided over by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, with the Anglican Dean of Windsor participating, before accompanying the coffin to Frogmore.

Prince Harry will be in the UK next week for charity events, but it is not known if he would stay for the funeral, which is expected to be attended by many senior royals.

The Prince and Princess of Wales said she would be a “much missed member of the family” who had “worked tirelessly to help others and supported many causes, including through her love of music”.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the Duchess of Kent brought “compassion, dignity and a human touch to everything she did”.

The duchess supported music charities and taught music at a Hull primary school, where pupils knew nothing of the royal background of “Mrs Kent”.

She will be remembered as a familiar figure at the Wimbledon tennis championships, where she handed over trophies – and consoled those who had lost, famously including a tearful Jana Novotna in 1993.

Tennis player Martina Navratilova posted a tribute with a picture of herself and the duchess at Wimbledon, saying it was “amazing how many millions of people around the globe she affected in a positive way”.

The duchess, who stepped back from her royal life in her later years, had supported charities including Childline and the Passage, which supports homeless people, based in Westminster not far from where her funeral will be held later this month.