Virtually each English student learns about how King Henry the Eighth, the confident Tudor-era monarch motivated by lust as well as his pursuit for a male successor, separated from the Roman Catholic church during the 16th century when the pope refused to dissolve his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Henry created the Church of England, appointed himself as its highest authority, parted from Catherine and married his next wife (who lasted just three years prior to she was beheaded on treason charges).
The monarch did not end at that. He declared war on Catholicism, commanding religious houses to be destroyed, land and valuables seized, books and documents set ablaze, as well as clergy members executed.
For hundreds of years, Catholics across Britain were banned from openly worshipping. Even until the 1950s, interfaith unions between Catholics and Anglicans were discouraged.
Now, nearly five hundred years after Henry’s momentous breakaway, the current monarch, Charles the Third, has joined in prayer together with Pope Leo XIV under the magnificent frescoes of the Sistine Chapel as a gesture of reconciliation linking the Catholic Church and the Church of England.
“The era of mutual suspicion truly is now over,” Jamie Hawkey, a canon-theologian at Westminster Abbey, stated.
“Seventy years ago, it was not possible for Catholics and Anglicans to enter each other's places of worship without provoking serious disapproval. This is a moment when history can be seen to be healed.”
Conflict, strife, and hostility characterised relations between Catholics and Anglicans over many years. Queen Elizabeth I was declared an unbeliever and expelled by Pope Pius V in 1570.
In 1605, a conspiracy involving Catholic plotters such as Guy Fawkes to blow up the British legislature with the Protestant King James I inside was thwarted.
The 1701 Act of Settlement confirmed a ban on a Catholic or their spouse ascending the monarchy.
But from the mid-point of the 1900s, relations between the C of E and the Roman Catholic church have thawed, with regular visits to the Vatican by royalty and church leaders.
In 2013, the Succession to the Crown Act eased limitations on royal heirs marrying Roman Catholics, although the sovereign must continue to be an Anglican.
Earlier this year, the royal couple undertook a discreet trip to the pontiff days before his passing. And in September, Charles became the first monarch in half a millennium to be present at a Catholic mass while participating in the funeral of the Duchess of Kent, who embraced the Catholic faith.
The past 60 years had seen an “extraordinary rediscovery of our common roots”, said the scholar, while admitting that major differences remained.
“This country has an extensive past of difficulties with the Vatican, of friction dating back to the Reformation,” an author commented.
“We have traveled a very long way … but until now it was unseen the highest leader of Anglicanism – namely, the king – praying on bended knee alongside the leader of the global Catholic community.”
