Vatican City — King Charles III met Thursday with Pope Leo XIV during a state visit to the Vatican, and the British monarch made history as the first head of the Church of England to pray publicly with a pontiff.
The 76-year-old king, who, by virtue of his role as the monarch also holds the title of supreme governor of the mother church of Anglicanism, flew to Rome Wednesday evening with his wife, Queen Camilla, for what Buckingham Palace described as a “historic” trip.
The royals were greeted at the Apostolic Palace on Thursday morning by a ceremonial guard of honor by the Swiss Guard, the pope’s colorful private bodyguards, before a private meeting with Chicago native Leo in the papal library.
It was Charles’s first meeting with Pope Leo, who took over as head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics in May following the death of Pope Francis.
The king and queen joined an ecumenical service at midday (1000 GMT) in the Sistine Chapel led by Leo and the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, currently the senior cleric of the Church of England.
Broadcast live by Vatican media, it was the first time a reigning English or British monarch has prayed publicly with a pope since English king Henry VIII broke with Rome 500 years ago.
Triggered by then-Pope Clement VII’s refusal to annul Henry’s marriage so he could marry another woman, the schism made the monarch the head of the separate Church of England.
The break with Rome created a schism that remains to this day, even if there has been a significant rapprochement in recent decades.
In 1961, the late Queen Elizabeth II, Charles’s mother, became the first British monarch to visit the Holy See since the split.
Thursday’s service, held beneath Michelangelo’s spectacular ceiling frescoes, was centered on conservation and protecting the environment, a cause long championed by Charles. It brought together Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the choir from the Sistine Chapel joined by that of Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, one of the king’s residences.
The visit comes at a delicate time for Charles following new revelations about his brother Prince Andrew, who is mired in a scandal surrounding late U.S. sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew announced on Friday that he would relinquish his title as Duke of York, reportedly under pressure from Charles and Prince William, the king’s son and heir and Andrew’s nephew. Andrew had already stepped back from his official royal duties in 2019.
Charles has visited the Vatican several times and met privately with Pope Francis on April 9, just days before the pontiff’s death. The king sent Prince William to the funeral and his brother Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, to Leo’s inauguration mass.
