As Sarah Mullally becomes the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, her rise could influence the Vatican’s debate over women in ministry.

King Charles has become the first British monarch to pray with a pope at the Vatican since the Catholic and Anglican churches split up five centuries ago.

King Charles III became the first head of the Church of England on Thursday to pray publicly with a pope in a Vatican service led by Leo XIV.

Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.

The Vatican said Tuesday it regrets the decision by the Church of England's governing body to allow the ordination of women as bishops. The move by the Anglican Church's General Synod "is a rift to the apostolic tradition" of ordaining only men as bishops,