Massimo Faggioli 11 November 2025
The meeting between King Charles III, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and Pope Leo XIV, the leader of the Catholic Church, was history-making. The British monarch had met the pope before in the previous century, beginning with King Edward VII and Leo XIII in 1903, until Elizabeth II and Pope Francis met in 2014. But in the past, visits made by the British monarch to the Vatican were labelled “informal” or “private visits”, thus sidestepping the political, diplomatic, and ecumenical complications surrounding the meeting of the leaders of two officially separated (since Henry VIII’s decision in 1534) branches of the Christian family.
