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And the king has made history, becoming the first supreme governor of the Church of England to ever pray with a pope
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His Majesty met Pope Leo XIV ahead of a special service at the Sistine Chapel
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Well, in another historic step, the king was presented with a special seat at one of Rome's major people, Basilicas
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Historian and royal commentator Alexander Larmann joins us now. Alexander, good to see you. How historic is this moment
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We've been talking about it all morning, but just sum it up for us, what this actually really means
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Good afternoon. Well, I'm actually in Italy at the moment, completely coincidentally
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and it's impossible to overstate what a big deal this is in this country
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because people are seeing Charles, who was obviously the defender of the faith
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the governor of the Church of England, and I think it's also fair to say that the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church
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has not always been the closest. But what Charles is doing, I think, very successfully is he is saying, essentially, the two faiths can coexist
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And of course, what's interesting is that I don't think any other monarch in the last few centuries has actually seen it as their responsibility to do this, because ultimately, people don't take faith that seriously
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One thing that you can say about Charles, whether you like him as king or not, he is somebody who understands history and he understands the significance of what he's doing
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Because obviously, for a monarch of England, a monarch of the United Kingdom, I should say, to be praying with a pope, 500 years ago, they would have said that was an absolute impossibility
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But now, that really does show that bridges have been mended. And it's something that I think will be a significant moment forever
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Of course, the trouble is that there have been so many other royal stories in the past week
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But something like this, which should have been the biggest story of the past month, possibly the past year, is possibly not going to have the attention it deserves
