King Charles III and Queen Camilla of the United Kingdom will make a state visit to the Holy See next month, with plans to hold an audience with Pope Francis on April 8.
The English royalty will be in Italy from April 7–10, with the first part of the visit being focused on the Vatican and participation in the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, according to a program released by Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.
The Vatican has not commented on a potential meeting between King Charles and Pope Francis, whose schedule has been suspended while he is recovering from double pneumonia in Gemelli Hospital. Medical staff have declined to give any estimates on a date for the pontiff’s potential discharge, with his stay now having extended over one month.
In addition to their expected meeting with Pope Francis, the king and queen will attend an ecumenical service on the theme of “Care for Creation” in the Sistine Chapel, Buckingham Palace said March 18.
For the first time, the king will also visit the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, which, the palace said, had a particular link to English kings before the Reformation.
Members of the Choir of His Majesty’s Chapel Royal and the Choir of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, will perform at the basilica and during the service in the Sistine Chapel.
King Charles III will also attend a reception with seminarians from Britain and across the commonwealth, while Queen Camilla will meet with Catholic religious women from the International Union of Superiors General (IUSG) who work to prevent human trafficking and sexual violence against women.
On April 9, the monarchs will make a state visit to Italy, with the program including several ceremonial engagements in addition to meetings with Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
King Charles III will be the first British monarch to address a joint session of the Italian Parliament. He and the queen will also attend a state banquet and lay a wreath at the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” a war memorial located at the Altar of the Fatherland.
The Italian Air Force’s aerobatic team, “Frecce Tricolori,” and the Royal Air Force aerobatic team, the “Red Arrows,” will also do a joint flyover over the city of Rome to mark the two countries’ common defense interests as NATO allies.
The last day of the trip will be devoted to a visit to Ravenna, a city in the northeastern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, where a festival on April 10 will celebrate the area’s traditional produce and cuisine.
While in Ravenna, the king and queen will attend a reception to mark the 80th anniversary of the province’s liberation from Nazi occupation by Allied Forces on April 10, 1945.
This article was originally published on Catholic News Agency.
