Virtually every British schoolchild learns about how Henry VIII, the confident Tudor-era monarch driven by desire and his quest for a male successor, separated from the Roman Catholic church during the 16th century when the Vatican refused to dissolve his marriage with his first wife.
The king created the Anglican Church, named his own person its supreme governor, divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn (she lasted just three years before she was beheaded on treason charges).
The monarch did not end there. He initiated conflict on Catholicism, ordering religious houses to be demolished, property and treasures seized, libraries and manuscripts burned, and priests, monks and abbots put to death.
For hundreds of years, followers of Catholicism across Britain were prohibited from openly worshipping. Up until the 1950s, mixed marriages involving Catholics and Protestants were frowned upon.
Today, nearly five hundred years after the Tudor king's momentous separation, the current monarch, Charles the Third, has prayed together with Pope Leo XIV under the sublime paintings within the Vatican as a gesture of reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.
“The age of distrust between faiths truly is now over,” a theologian, a canon-theologian at Westminster Abbey, stated.
“Seventy years ago, it was not possible for Catholics and Anglicans to go into each other's places of worship without provoking serious disapproval. This is a moment where history can be seen being reconciled.”
Turmoil, violence and antagonism defined relations between Catholics and Anglicans over many years. The Tudor queen was labeled an unbeliever and excommunicated by the papacy in 1570.
In 1605, a conspiracy involving Catholic plotters such as a notorious figure to blow up the British legislature with the Protestant King James I inside was thwarted.
A historic law reinforced a ban on a Catholic or their spouse succeeding to the throne.
However since the middle of the last century, relations between the C of E and Catholics have thawed, with regular visits to Rome by royalty and archbishops of Canterbury.
In 2013, the Succession to the Crown Act relaxed limitations on royal heirs wedding Catholics, even though the monarch must continue to belong to the Church of England.
Earlier this year, King Charles and Queen Camilla undertook a discreet trip to Pope Francis days before his death. And in September, Charles was 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 have witnessed a remarkable reconnection of our common roots”, said Hawkey, while admitting that major differences persisted.
“This country has a long history of challenges with Rome, of tensions dating back to the religious split,” Catherine Pepinster commented.
“We have traveled a very long way … yet previously it was unseen the supreme head of Anglicanism – that is, the king – kneeling in prayer with the head of the global Catholic community.”
