29th October 2025

The royal visit to Rome last week was welcome. The pictures of Pope Leo and King Charles, Supreme Governor of the (Protestant) Church of England, praying together was a symbol of the overcoming of historic estrangements in a world where disunity and hostilities are all too evident or actually deepening.

But there’s a slightly amusing side to the solemnity of the occasion in the Sistine Chapel, watched over by the Swiss Guards. Was this a meeting between the respective heads of state of the Vatican and the UK, or of heads of churches? It was a bit of both, a legacy of the untidiness of history, especially on the British side.

Whereas Leo is both the ruler of Vatican City and Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church of Rome, Charles’s role is a lot less clear. The Church of which he is head is the church of only one part (England) of the UK. The Church of Scotland is not Anglican but Presbyterian and the (Anglican) Church in Wales is independent of the Church of England, likewise the Church of Ireland which serves both Northern Ireland and the Republic. So this was hardly a meeting of like with like. It reflects a holy, muddled mismatch.

Which is maybe good. It can remind us that the most important unity, which has in fact been building steadily between the churches for decades, is between not their heads, clerical or otherwise, but their people at large, represented on the Church of England side by Charles – a layperson. Baptists, remember, claim to believe in the priesthood of all believers!

Keith Clements