Almost every British schoolchild learns about how King Henry the Eighth, a swaggering Tudor king driven by lust as well as his quest for an heir, broke away from Rome's Roman Catholic church in 1534 after the pope declined to dissolve his union with Catherine of Aragon.
The king created the Church of England, appointed himself as its supreme governor, divorced Catherine and married Anne Boleyn (who lasted only 36 months prior to her execution for treason).
Henry did not end at that. He declared war against the Catholic faith, commanding monasteries to be destroyed, land and valuables seized, libraries and manuscripts burned, and priests, monks and abbots put to death.
For centuries, followers of Catholicism across Britain were banned from public religious practice. Up until the mid-20th century, mixed marriages involving Catholics and Protestants were frowned upon.
Now, almost five hundred years following Henry’s historic breakaway, the current monarch, King Charles III, has joined in prayer with the Holy Father beneath the sublime frescoes of the Sistine Chapel as a gesture of rapprochement between the Roman Catholic church and the Anglican Communion.
“The age of mutual suspicion really is at an end,” Jamie Hawkey, an ecclesiastical scholar from the historic abbey, remarked.
“Seventy years ago, it was not possible for members of both churches to go into each other's places of worship without causing great offence. This is a moment where history can be seen to be healed.”
Conflict, strife, and hostility defined relations between Catholics and Anglicans over many years. Queen Elizabeth I was declared an unbeliever and expelled by Pope Pius V in 1570.
During that era, a conspiracy involving Catholic plotters such as a notorious figure to destroy the Houses of Parliament with the Protestant King James I inside was thwarted.
The 1701 Act of Settlement confirmed a prohibition on a Catholic or anyone married to a Catholic ascending the monarchy.
However since the middle of the last century, relations between the C of E and Catholics have improved, through repeated trips to the Vatican by royalty and church leaders.
In 2013, new legislation relaxed limitations for those in line to the throne marrying Catholics, even though the sovereign must still be an Anglican.
Recently, King Charles and Queen Camilla made a private visit to Pope Francis shortly prior to his death. And in September, the king was the first monarch in half a millennium to publicly attend a Catholic service when he attended the memorial of a royal convert, a convert to Catholicism.
The past 60 years have witnessed a remarkable reconnection of our common roots”, noted the scholar, while admitting that significant disagreements remained.
“This country has an extensive past of challenges with the Vatican, of friction ever since the religious split,” Catherine Pepinster observed.
“We’ve come a great distance … yet previously it was unseen the highest leader of Anglicanism – namely, the king – kneeling in prayer with the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics.”
