Buckingham Palace has announced King Charles and Queen Camilla will undertake a State Visit to the Holy See in late October, where they will join Pope Leo XIV in celebrating the Jubilee Year.
The upcoming visit follows an earlier plan for the couple to travel to the Vatican in the Spring, which was postponed due to the declining health of Pope Francis.
However, during the State Visit to Italy, The King and Queen managed to pay a brief private visit to Pope Francis in April – on their 20th wedding anniversary in fact – with the palace releasing a photograph of Their Majesties meeting the late Pope.
Although details of the October programme have not yet been released, the cancelled visit from earlier this year included a number of engagements such as The King visiting the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, which had a particular link to English Kings since before the Reformation.
The Queen, meanwhile, was planned to meet with Catholic religious women from the International Union of Superiors General, who work to prevent human trafficking and sexual violence against women.
King Charles is no stranger to the Holy See, having visited the Vatican on five previous occasions as Prince of Wales: April 1985, April 2005 for the Funeral Mass of Saint John Paul II, April 2009, April 2017 & October 2019 for the Canonisation of Cardinal John Henry Newman.
Queen Camilla accompanied him on two of those visits, in 2009 and 2017, when she was Duchess of Cornwall.
