By Christopher Lamb
At the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the papal representatives sat outside Westminster Abbey and watched the procession go in and out. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Bernard Griffin, had been invited to sit alongside the representatives but declined.
Seventy years later, things look very different. When King Charles III is crowned, two cardinals, one of whom is representing Pope Francis, will be present in the abbey. It is the first time Catholic prelates have been involved in the coronation for 500 years.
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, the church historian, told me he believes the last cardinal to be involved in a British coronation was Cardinal David Beaton, who crowned the infant Mary Queen of Scots in 1543. The last Catholic bishop to have a role in a coronation was Bishop Owen Oglethorpe who officiated at the crowning of Queen Elizabeth I in 1559.
This time, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, will impart a blessing over the King during the coronation, while Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s secretary of state and No 2 to Pope Francis, will have a seat in the abbey.
Cardinal Nichols described all of this is a remarkable moment for relations between Catholics and Anglicans and the UK and the Holy See. As a boy growing up in Crosby, Lancashire, he recalls the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, but said at that time he would “never have dreamt of stepping inside” a non-Catholic church.
At that time, Catholics were not permitted to attend non-Catholic services in churches, although exceptions could be made. These included allowing senior lay Catholics, such as the Duke of Norfolk, to be involved in a coronation (the duke, whose family remained Catholic during and after the Reformation, holds the important constitutional role of Earl Marshal). The formal ban was lifted over subsequent decades thanks to ecumenical efforts and the reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council.
On 4 May 2023, the Holy See confirmed in a statement that Cardinal Parolin will “represent Pope Francis at the coronation of His Majesty King Charles III in Westminster Abbey.”
Francis has developed a good relationship with the British royal family throughout his pontificate. He met the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in 2014, and the Prince of Wales, as he then was, in 2017 and 2019. A meeting between King Charles and the Pope in the Vatican is predicted to take place soon. In another significant ecumenical gesture, Francis donated relics of the True Cross to mark the centenary of the Church in Wales. These relics are contained in a processional cross which will be used at the coronation.
The last time he saw the King, Cardinal Nichols said, the King told him: “Please give my good wishes to the Pope,” and the cardinal said that when he sees the Pope, “Francis says the same to me”. The cardinal said the King had “the highest regard for the Catholic church”.
During the coronation ceremony, Cardinal Nichols will impart his blessing on the King at a “pretty central moment”, coming straight after St Edward’s Crown has been placed on the monarch’s head.
The cardinal will give an individual blessing along with the archbishops of Canterbury and York and leaders of other denominations, with the order of service explaining that due to “the progress in ecumenical relations … for the first time, this blessing [of the King] is to be shared by Christian leaders across the country”.
Cardinal Nichols explained that the Catholic involvement in the coronations of monarchs was not new. For 500 years, the liturgies were Catholic. The eucharist service, he pointed out, includes numerous prayers that Catholics will be familiar with. And, remarkably, the Gloria is taken from William Byrd’s 16th-century Mass for Four Voices, written for recusants who had refused to be part of the newly established Church of England. “It’s a renewing of something that has been broken for so long,” he said.
Reflecting on the deeply Christian coronation liturgy at a time when increased numbers of people are disaffiliating from churches, Cardinal Nichols, 77, expressed concern about the need for better religious literacy in British society.
“Religious literacy is a crucially important part of life,” he said. “Literacy doesn’t mean agreement, but it at least indicates an understanding. So, if there are people who just want to say, ‘Oh, it’s a whole load of rubbish’, I would want to say, ‘Do you know how to read the landscape in which you are living?’”
He added: “You can hardly walk down a street in London, or a town or a village without seeing a church. And if that is simply dismissed out of hand, then you are not reading the context in which you live and you won’t understand its culture and you won’t understand its roots.”
While there are Catholic elements to the liturgy, it remains a rite of the established church, with the King pledging to maintain the “Protestant reformed religion” and “secure the Protestant succession to the throne”. Catholics remain legally forbidden from becoming monarchs of the United Kingdom, something that could only be changed through an act of parliament.
Cardinal Nichols said the “historic words are sharp”, but pointed to how the King sets “his wholeheartedly accepted constitutional duty into the wider context of our contemporary nation”. He explained that soon after the King made the Protestant oaths, a new prayer had been added to the service where Charles would pray to God to be “a blessing to all thy children, of every faith and conviction”.
The cardinal said the coronation was another moment to underline how Catholics had become fully assimilated into wider society, even though he says “there will always be pockets of hostility”.
The crown’s relationship with Rome was broken by Henry VIII in 1534 when he established himself as the head of the Church of England. The religious conflict of the period led to martyrs, both Catholic and Protestant, and for centuries the papacy and the British monarch were at odds. Catholics in Britain experienced persecution, discrimination and hostility over many years.
The first papal representations were sent to London for Edward VII’s coronation in 1902, while full diplomatic relations between the UK and Holy See were not established until 1982. Queen Elizabeth II made significant efforts towards healing the divide between Catholics and Anglicans during her reign and met five popes in her lifetime.
Christopher Lamb is the Vatican correspondent of The Tablet
