Dame Sarah Mullally’s visit to Rome was always going to be a bit awkward. There is no way around it. The first woman to hold herself out as Archbishop of Canterbury was received by a Pope whose Church teaches, definitively, that she cannot be ordained at all.
The meeting took place on April 27, during Mullally’s pilgrimage to Rome, and included a private audience with Pope Leo XIV and joint prayer in the Chapel of Urban VIII. The Vatican presented it, quite naturally, as another moment in Anglican-Catholic dialogue.
