King Charles III and Queen Camilla will travel to the Vatican for a state visit next month, Buckingham Palace has announced. Source: Catholic Herald.
The visit was originally scheduled for April this year but was postponed because of the poor health of the late Pope Francis, who died later that month after 12 years as pontiff.
The King and Queen did, however, make a brief private visit to Pope Francis just weeks before his death. It was one of the last audiences granted by the late pontiff, who had been receiving some visitors while convalescing at the Casa Santa Marta.
The rescheduled visit will be the first time the King has met Pope Leo, who was elected in May as the 267th successor of St Peter.
The palace said the trip would “celebrate the ecumenical work by the Church of England and the Catholic Church, reflecting the Jubilee year’s theme of walking together as pilgrims of hope”.
The King has long sought to foster closer ties across Christian traditions. Earlier this month, he attended the funeral of the Duchess of Kent, which was the first Catholic Requiem Mass for a member of the Royal Family in modern times.
The forthcoming meeting continues a series of papal audiences stretching back decades. Charles met Pope John Paul II during the Polish pontiff’s visit to Britain in 1982 and was present at his funeral in 2005. He met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in 2009, and Francis in Rome, in 2017 and 2019, before their final meeting this year.
Although relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England were once marked by centuries of division following Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 16th century, they have been characterised by cordiality in recent times.
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King Charles III to visit Pope Leo XIV (By Niwa Limbu, Catholic Herald)
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