The historic significance of King Charles and Pope Leo praying together

King Charles and Queen Camilla are set to travel to the Holy See next week, between October 22 and 23.

Amid the scheduled state visit, an important announcement which has captured the public imagination is that the King will publicly pray alongside Pope Leo XIV.

A historic moment, the reigning British monarch will become the first of his lineage in centuries to perform prayers with an active Catholic sovereign — the significance of the occasion already echoing among its observers.

An affair 500 years in the making

King Charles will become the first British sovereign in 500 years to perform prayers with a Catholic pope. As supreme governor of the Church of England, “The king will join Pope Leo XIV at an ecumenical service in the Sistine Chapel,” per The Guardian.

Moreover, the King will be assigned a special seat for the scheduled invocation, which will be decorated with his official coat of arms and symbolise the “mutual respect between Pope Leo and the King as heads of state.”

Following his majesty’s latest visit, the seat will stay behind in “the apse of the basilica” and will be available for the use of his future heirs and successors for evermore.

The reunion of two churches

The resounding significance of King Charles and the Pope praying together is based on the fact that it is supposed to mark the imminent reunion of the Church of England and the Catholic Church, five centuries after King Henry VIII became a proponent of the Protestant Reformation in England.

Since Henry’s separation from the Vatican and denouncement of the papacy, Great Britain has been a Protestant state.

Acknowledging British history, a spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said, “This will be the first state visit, since the Reformation, where the pope and the monarch will pray together in an ecumenical service in the Sistine Chapel, and the first time the monarch will have attended a service in St Paul’s Outside the Walls, a church with an historic connection to the English crown.”

Royal Confrater

King Charles is also being conferred the title of the Roman Catholic Church’s Royal Confrater. An honour, which “confers no duties or obligations on the King”, but is supposed to recognise “more than a hundred years of deeper and warmer relations between the United Kingdom and the Vatican, and between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church”, per the Palace representative.

King Charles will additionally further the dynamic between his church and the See of Rome which his mother, Queen Elizabeth, initiated after years upon years of excommunication. The late monarch became the first of her heritage since the Reformation to visit the Vatican, in 1961.