The British monarch made a historic visit to the Vatican and became the country's first reigning monarch since Henry VIII to take part in a public prayer with the head of the Catholic Church. About this report Guardian.
The ceremony with the participation of Charles III and Queen Camilla took place in the famous Sistine Chapel. Pope Leo XIV and the British monarch prayed together, combining Catholic and Anglican traditions in prayer. The event, which occurred for the first time in nearly 500 years since England broke ties with Rome, was seen as an important symbolic step toward interfaith reconciliation.
Dutch correspondent for the Nederlands Dagblad newspaper Hendro Munsterman described the visit as “symbolic of contact and respect between the two churches.” At the same time, Northern Ireland's Protestants sharply criticized the meeting. Therefore, Pastor Kyle Paisley said on BBC News that the king must abdicate if he participates in Catholic worship, because this conflicts with his oath to defend the Protestant faith.
Anglicanism is one of the branches of Protestantism that emerged during the Reformation in England. The Reformation in England, unlike other countries, was carried out “from above”, by order of the monarch Henry VIII, who thus tried to break with the Pope and the Roman Curia in order to divorce his first wife, as well as consolidate his power in England. The Pope refused to divorce Henry VIII.
Henry then forced his parliament to declare in 1534 the independence of the English church from the papacy. In 1549, during the reign of the young King Edward VI, a theological commission, chaired by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, completed the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer. Thanks to the Act of Uniformity, it entered mandatory use from Pentecost on June 9, 1549, as the only legal form of worship.
It was previously reported that Charles III addressed issues of faith amid the ongoing scandal surrounding his brother, Prince Andrew. According to writer and friend of the king, Giles Brendreth, the current situation was making Charles III depressed and the monarch began to pray more often before his meeting with the Pope.
