King Charles arrives at the Vatican for mass with the pope and breaks 500-year-old taboo

The Anglican Church emerged in the 16th century, when King Henry 8 broke with Rome after the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1961, Queen Elizabeth II was the first British monarch to visit the Vatican since the rupture.

The highlight of the visit will be this Thursday (23), when Charles and Leo 14 will pray together under Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The ceremony will have the theme of protecting nature, a cause that the king has defended for decades.

Catholic and Anglican traditions

The religious service will combine Catholic and Anglican traditions, with the joint participation of the choirs of the Sistine Chapel and St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. “It’s a historic event,” historian William Gibson, from Oxford Brookes University, told AFP, noting that the British sovereign is legally obliged to be Protestant.

Between 1536 and 1914, there were no official diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Vatican. The British embassy was only opened in 1982. And it was only in 2013 that legislation was relaxed to allow members of the royal family who married Catholics to maintain their inheritance rights. Before that, they were forced to renounce the throne.

During their visit, Charles and Camilla will also take part in an ecumenical ceremony at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. The king will be named a “royal confrere”, and a special seat has been created for him, which will remain in the basilica and can be used by future British monarchs.