King Charles III and Queen Camilla prayed Thursday with Pope Leo XIV in a historic visit to the Vatican to forge closer relations between the Church of England and the Catholic Church.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla met with Pope Leo XIV on Thursday. The trio met during an audience at the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City. They then went to the Sistine Chapel where, for the first time in 500 years, a King of England and a pope prayed together.

King Charles shared a laugh with a group of local schoolchildren during his visit to the Vatican, where he and Queen Camilla met with Pope Leo and had a historic moment.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla have visited the Vatican to pray with Pope Leo XIV. This historic meeting aims to strengthen ties between the Church of England and the Catholic Church. The event marks the first time since the Reformation that the heads of these two churches have prayed together.

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.

The Vatican's child protection commission accused senior Catholic leaders on Thursday of being too slow to help victims of sexual abuse by clergy and implement new safeguarding efforts in an unusually critical internal report on the issue.

In September, Pope Leo XIV spoke out against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in response to a question about the controversy surrounding the archbishop of Chicago, Blase Cupich, and his decision to award Senator Dick Durbin a lifetime achievement award in spite of his support of abortion access, which the Catholic Church opposes.

The Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts sought by Indigenous communities in Canada as part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas,