King Charles III to visit Pope Leo XIV

King Charles III and Queen Camilla will travel to the Vatican for a state visit to Pope Leo XIV in October, Buckingham Palace has announced.

The visit was originally scheduled for April this year but was postponed because of the poor health of the late Pope Francis, who died later that month after 12 years as pontiff. The King and Queen did, however, make a brief private visit to Pope Francis just weeks before his death. It was one of the last audiences granted by the late pontiff, who had been receiving some visitors while convalescing at the Casa Santa Marta.

The rescheduled visit will be the first time the King has met Pope Leo, who was elected in May as the 267th successor of St Peter. At 70, Leo is the first pope from the United States and the wider Anglosphere – a fact that lends a distinctive character to this meeting between the head of the Church of England and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics who heralds from a country that fought a war of independence to free itself from the British monarchy.

The details of the October programme have not been disclosed, but this year’s theme of “Pilgrims of Hope” is expected to be reflected in the ecumenical emphasis of the royal audience.

The palace said the trip would “celebrate the ecumenical work by the Church of England and the Catholic Church, reflecting the jubilee year’s theme of walking together as pilgrims of hope”.

The King has long sought to foster closer ties across Christian traditions. Earlier this month, he attended the funeral of the Duchess of Kent, which was the first Catholic Requiem Mass for a member of the Royal Family in modern times.

In 2019, as the Prince of Wales, he visited the Birmingham Oratory that was founded by St John Henry Newman, who was then canonised in Rome that year in a ceremony that Charles also attended.

The forthcoming meeting continues a series of papal audiences stretching back decades. Charles met Pope John Paul II during the Polish pontiff’s visit to Britain in 1982 and was later present at his funeral in 2005. He met Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in 2009, and Francis twice in Rome, in 2017 and 2019, before their final meeting this year.

Though relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England were once marked by centuries of division following Henry VIII’s break with Rome in the 16th century, they have in recent times been characterised by cordiality.

The October audience between Charles and Leo therefore comes as part of a long tradition of royal visits to the Holy See, while also carrying a new significance. It will be the first official occasion when an English king, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, meets a pope from the rebellious land that became the United States after taking the British monarchy to task.

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‍Photo: King Charles III and Queen Camilla view items on display during a visit to the Royal Collection exhibition, in the Green Drawing Room, during the State visit by the President of the United States of America at Windsor Castle, Windsor, England, 17 September2025. (Photo by Aaron Chown - WPA Pool/Getty Images.)