King Charles III, on a state visit to the Vatican on Wednesday and Thursday, will pray with Pope Leo XIV during an ecumenical service in the Sistine Chapel, the first since the Anglican schism five centuries ago.
This visit occurs in a delicate context for the British monarch, whose brother Andrés is the subject of new damning revelations in the Epstein case.
For Charles III, who plays the role of supreme governor of the Anglican Church of England, this will be a first meeting with the new head of the Catholic Church, who succeeded Pope Francis in May.
The visit of Charles, accompanied by his wife Camilla, “will mark an important moment in the relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England,” Buckingham Palace stressed.
The Anglican religion was born almost 500 years ago from a break with the Catholic Church, caused by the King of England Henry VIII after the Pope’s refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
In 1961, Charles’s mother, Elizabeth II, was the first British monarch to visit the Vatican since the schism.
The highlight of the visit, an ecumenical service in the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, will see the Pope and the British sovereign pray together under Michelangelo’s famous frescoes. Its theme will be the protection of nature, a theme very dear to Charles III.
“Historical event”
This religious service will mix Catholic and Anglican traditions. The choir of the Sistine Chapel will accompany that of St. George’s Chapel in Windsor.
“It is a historic event,” William Gibson, professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford Brookes University, told AFP. Remember that the law requires that the British sovereign be a Protestant.
“From 1536 to 1914 there were no formal diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Holy See,” he states. London did not open an embassy in the Vatican until 1982.
And it wasn’t until 2013 that the law was relaxed slightly to allow royals who married Catholics to retain their place in the line of succession, says William Gibson. Until then, they had to give up all rights to the throne.
During their visit, Carlos and Camilla will also attend another ecumenical religious service at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.
On this occasion, the king will be named a “royal companion” and a special seat has been created for him that will remain in the basilica and can be used in the future by his successors on the British throne.
Leo XIV and the British monarch will celebrate together the Jubilee Year or Holy Year of the Catholic Church, which is celebrated every 25 years and attracts millions of pilgrims to the Vatican.
This state visit occurs one day after the publication of the posthumous memoirs of Virginia Giuffre, the main accuser in the case of child molester Jeffrey Epstein.
She claims to have been forced to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew, brother of Charles III, on three occasions, the first of which was when she was 17 years old.
Andrew, already separated from the royal family since 2019, announced on Friday, under pressure from Charles, that he would renounce using his title of Duke of York.
For his part, Charles, who is 76 years old, is still being treated for cancer, as he revealed in early 2024.
He has already visited the Vatican several times.
The royal couple met privately with Leo XIV’s predecessor, Pope Francis, on April 9 at the Vatican, 12 days before his death, on the sidelines of a state visit to Italy.
Source: BFM TV
