King Charles III became this Thursday in the first British monarch to pray publicly with a Pope since the Anglican schism five centuries ago, during a celebration presided over by Leo XIV in the Sistine Chapel.
Pope Leo XIV and Charles III pray in public; something not seen 5 centuries ago
The ceremony combined Catholic and Anglican traditions and marked a new rapprochement between the two Churches. The job, which lasted about 30 minutesrepresents an unprecedented act since the birth of Anglicanism in 1534, when King Henry VIII broke with Rome.
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The Pontiff Leo
The choir of the Sistine Chapel accompanied that of St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, and the central theme of the prayer was the protection of nature, uA sign of the convergence between both Churches on environmental issues.
A few minutes before, Pope Leo XIV received the 76-year-old monarch, who serves as supreme governor of the Church of England, in a private audience.
The pontiff was appointed head of the Catholic Church in May after the death of his predecessor, Francis.
King accompanied by his wife
Charles III, accompanied by his wife Camilla, addressed the Pope in English, in a cordial atmosphere, and exchanged gifts with him, according to images released by the Vatican.
On Thursday afternoon, Charles and Camilla attended another ecumenical religious service at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, one of Rome’s four major basilicas.
On this occasion the king was officially given the title of “royal brother”, and a special seat was created for him, which will remain in the basilica and can be used in the future by his successors on the British throne.
The visit comes in a delicate context for Charles III, as his brother Andrés faces new and compromising revelations in the case of sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.