King to attend Duchess of Kent’s Catholic funeral in historic first

The King will tomorrow attend a Catholic Requiem Mass for the Duchess of Kent at Westminster Cathedral. The occasion will mark the first time a reigning monarch has attended a Catholic Mass on U.K ground in a formal capacity since the Reformation.

Katharine, Duchess of Kent, who died last week aged 92, converted to Catholicism in 1994, becoming the first member of the Royal Family to enter the Church since the deathbed conversion of King Charles II in 1685. She was the wife of the Duke of Kent, a cousin of Queen Elizabeth II.

Buckingham Palace has announced that the reception of the Duchess’s body into Westminster Cathedral will be private. Although Catholic funerals are ordinarily open to all the faithful, in this case only family members and a small number of guests will be present, with one general reporter permitted to attend.

The Requiem Mass will be celebrated by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, assisted by Bishop Jim Curry, an auxiliary in the diocese. Dr Christopher Cocksworth, the Anglican Dean of Windsor, will also take part, accompanying the body afterwards to Frogmore, the royal burial ground, where the Duchess will be laid to rest.

The liturgy will include prayers of commendation for the repose of the soul of the Duchess, reflecting Catholic belief in purgatory and the need for the prayers of the faithful. The Sign of Peace, as well as the celebration of the Eucharist, are expected to be moments of particular ecumenical significance, given the theological differences between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.

It is not anticipated that the King will receive Holy Communion, but he may present himself for a blessing. Such a gesture would be without precedent for a monarch in a Catholic liturgy in this country.

Katharine Kent was received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal Basil Hume in 1994. At the time, she described her decision as “fairly impulsive”, saying it stemmed from her encounters with Catholic friends rather than from controversy over the ordination of women in the Church of England.

Her conversion came nearly three centuries after the 1701 Act of Settlement barred Catholics from the line of succession. As she was Anglican at the time of her marriage in 1961, the Duke of Kent’s position in the succession was unaffected.

The King has attended Catholic liturgies abroad, notably the canonisation of St John Henry Newman in 2019 and the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005, when he was Prince of Wales. Queen Elizabeth II also attended Catholic services overseas but refrained from doing so in Britain.

The relationship between the Crown and the Catholic Church has been marked by centuries of estrangement since Henry VIII’s break with Rome. The monarch has since been bound to defend the Church of England, with Catholics long excluded from public life by law.

By the late 20th century, however, barriers were gradually eased. Under the leadership of Cardinal Basil Hume O.S.B., Archbishop of Westminster from 1976 to 1999, relations between the monarchy and the Catholic Church in England entered a new era of normalisation.

Tomorrow’s funeral will therefore mark a historic moment in the relationship between the Crown and the Catholic Church.

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Photo credit: Latin Mass Society of England and Wales Facebook page

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