{"id":412244,"date":"2025-09-10T04:37:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T04:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/412244\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T04:37:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T04:37:29","slug":"king-charles-to-be-first-monarch-at-catholic-funeral-in-britain-for-over-400-years-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/412244\/","title":{"rendered":"King Charles to be first monarch at Catholic funeral in Britain for over 400 years \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

King Charles<\/a> is to become the first monarch in over 400 years to officially attend a Catholic funeral in Britain, following the death of the Duchess of Kent.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Katharine Kent, who died on Thursday aged 92, converted to Catholicism in 1994 – the first member of the Royal family to do so since King Charles II converted on his deathbed in 1685.<\/p>\n

Her widower, the Duke of Kent, is Queen Elizabeth\u2019s cousin and now the oldest member of the Royal family at 89.<\/p>\n

A Requiem Mass will be held on September 16 at Westminster Cathedral, the largest Catholic Church in England and Wales.<\/p>\n

\"Nigel<\/a>\"Total<\/a><\/p>\n

Other senior royals to attend will include Queen Camilla, the Prince and Princess of Wales, while Prince Harry will decide in the coming days on whether he will attend.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Duchess of Kent died at the age of 92 (Rebecca Naden\/PA) <\/p>\n

Catherine Pepinster is the former editor of the Catholic Weekly, and told the Sunday Times it would be a day of \u201cgreat historical significance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were signs of rapprochement between the monarchy and the Catholic Church under Elizabeth II – she met many Popes – but was careful not to attend a Catholic Mass in this country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe King and the heir to the throne attending Mass in Britain – that is of an entirely different order. This is a huge step forward in ecumenical relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since King Henry VIII famously split from the Catholic Church in the 16th century over the Pope\u2019s refusal to grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, she added that British monarchs had been expected \u201cto stand up for the Church of England and reject the Church of Rome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although King Charles has attended Mass before, as the head of the Church of England he has never done so before in Britain.<\/p>\n

\"CharlesCharles and Camilla during a private meeting with Pope Francis in Rome on April 9 (The Vatican\/PA) <\/p>\n

Most recently, Charles and Camilla met privately with Pope Francis and prayed with him in the days before his death.<\/p>\n

As Prince of Wales, he also attended Pope John Paul II\u2019s funeral in 2005.<\/p>\n

In 1993, Queen Elizabeth II also attended the Catholic state funeral of King Baudouin in Brussels.<\/p>\n

Speaking of her \u201cfairly impulsive\u201d decision to convert to Catholicism, the Duchess of Kent previously told the Daily Telegraph in 1997: \u201cI am not going to pretend that it was anything to do with reading the Bible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had a great deal to do with people I met…I do live guidelines, and the Catholic Church offers you guidelines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always wanted that in my life: I like to know what is expected of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA notice is placed on the gates of Buckingham Palace in London announcing the death of the Duchess of Kent (Jonathan Brady\/PA) \"TheThe duchess shakes hands with the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume, after he had received her into the Roman Catholic Church (Martin Keene\/PA) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King Charles is to become the first monarch in over 400 years to officially attend a Catholic funeral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,13744,7730,7731,1760,141726,7710,519],"class_list":{"0":"post-412244","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-catholic-church","10":"tag-charles","11":"tag-charles-iii","12":"tag-king-charles","13":"tag-requiem-mass","14":"tag-royal-families","15":"tag-royal-family"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115178153405548587","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412244","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=412244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}