Duchess of Kent obituary: modernising member of royal family<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThere were signs of rapprochement between the monarchy and the Catholic Church under Elizabeth II \u2014 she met many popes \u2014 but was careful not to attend a Catholic Mass in this country.
\u201cThe King and the heir to the throne attending Mass in Britain \u2014 that is of an entirely different order. This is a huge step forward in ecumenical relations.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the King has previously attended Mass, he has never done so in Britain. For example, he attended the canonisation in Rome of John Henry Newman in 2019 and the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005. In April, Charles and Camilla also met Pope Francis privately at the Vatican during their Italy state visit, and prayed with him, just days before he died.<\/p>\n
Queen Elizabeth II attended the Catholic state funeral of King Baudouin of the Belgians, in St Michael\u2019s Cathedral in Brussels, in 1993.<\/p>\n
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The Duke and Duchess of Kent married at York Minster in 1961<\/p>\n
PA<\/p>\n
Lord Nicholas Windsor, the duchess\u2019s youngest son is a Catholic convert and the Earl of St Andrews, her oldest son is married to Sylvana Tomaselli, a Catholic.<\/p>\n
The British monarchy\u2019s complex relationship with Catholicism began with Pope Clement VII\u2019s 1527 refusal of Henry VIII\u2019s request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn.
In 1534, Henry formalised England\u2019s schism from Rome with the Act of Supremacy. During the reigns of his children Edward VI and Elizabeth I, Protestant zeal grew and Elizabeth became the first Supreme Governor of the Church of England.<\/p>\n
Pepinster said: \u201cFrom the time of Elizabeth I, monarchs have been expected to stand up for the Church of England and reject the Church of Rome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Duchess of Kent was received into the Catholic church in January 1994 by Cardinal Basil Hume, then Archbishop of Westminster, after consulting the Queen. The Act of Settlement of 1701 barred royals who became or married Catholics from the line of succession but the Duke of Kent was unaffected by his wife\u2019s decision because she was Protestant at the time of their marriage in 1961.<\/p>\n
In an interview given [to The Daily Telegraph] in 1997, the duchess described the decision as \u201cfairly impulsive\u201d. \u201cI am not going to pretend that it was anything to do with reading the Bible. It had a great deal to do with people I met.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katharine, who is said to have gained the late Queen\u2019s approval, added: \u201cI do love guidelines, and the Catholic Church<\/a> offers you guidelines. I have always wanted that in my life: I like to know what is expected of me.\u201d<\/p>\nHer announcement emphasised that her decision was not connected to controversy about the ordination of women in the Church of England which was raging at the time. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a joint statement that said it was the decision \u201cof a devout Christian on a spiritual journey\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The King will next week become the first monarch to attend a Catholic funeral in Britain in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,7730,7731,1760,7710,519],"class_list":{"0":"post-403803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-british-royal-family","9":"tag-charles","10":"tag-charles-iii","11":"tag-king-charles","12":"tag-royal-families","13":"tag-royal-family"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115159912341465433","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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