VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, prayed with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Monday, an encounter between Christianity's two most famous religious figures that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, given the divisions between their two churches over women's ordination and her historic appointment.
Mullally thanked Leo for welcoming her on her first foreign visit since she was installed last month as the first woman
leader of the Church of England and spiritual leader of millions of Anglicans around the world.
Mullally, whose appointment has split the already divided Anglican Communion, arrived early to meet with Leo in his library. The two then prayed together in the Urban VIII Chapel inside the Apostolic palace for what the Vatican said was a “moment of prayer.”
In her remarks to Leo, Mullally said both of them were called to preach the Gospel with “renewed clarity.”
“In the face of inhuman violence, deep division, and rapid societal change, we must keep telling a more hopeful story: that every human life has infinite value because we are precious children of God; that the human family is called to live as sisters and brothers,” she said. “We must therefore work together for the common good — always building bridges, never walls; that the poorest among us are closest to the heart of God.”
The Vatican didn't immediately provide the text of Leo's remarks to Mullally.
Mullally is on what she has called a four-day pilgrimage to Rome that has included visits to the main pontifical basilicas, where she has prayed at the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and met with top Vatican officials.
Lambeth Palace says her visit is designed “to strengthen Anglican–Roman Catholic relations through prayer, personal encounter, and formal theological dialogue. It aims to deepen bonds of communion, affirm a shared witness, and encourage ongoing collaboration at both global and local levels.”
Anglicans split from Rome in 1534, when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment. Despite a formal theological dialogue that began in the 1960s, big differences remain, especially over the Church of England’s decision to ordain women. The Roman Catholic Church reserves the priesthood for men.
The first female Anglican priests were ordained in 1994, its first female bishop in 2015, and now Mullally as the first archbishop of Canterbury.
Leo and Mullally have already exchanged greetings, with Leo congratulating her on her installation last month but acknowledging she was taking over at a “challenging” time and that differences still divide the Anglican and Catholic churches.
“We also know that the ecumenical journey has not always been smooth,” Leo wrote. “Despite much progress, our immediate predecessors, Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby, acknowledged frankly that new circumstances have presented new disagreements among us,” Leo wrote.
He nevertheless vowed to continue dialogue, and in October Leo welcomed King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the Vatican, where they prayed in the Sistine Chapel. Charles is the titular head of the Church of England.
That event, Oct. 25, marked the first time since the Reformation that the heads of the two Christian churches had prayed together.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the first formal ecumenical statement between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, signed in 1966 at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls basilica by Archbishop Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI.
Mullally for her part has expressed solidarity with Leo’s peace message, after the American-born pope was harshly criticized by President Donald Trump for his calls for peace in Iran.
George Gross, an expert on theology and the monarchy at King’s College London, said the meeting was historic, particularly given the Vatican doesn't recognize the female priesthood.
“If we were to go back several hundred years, it’s unthinkable,” he said. “It’s the fact that the pope is willing to meet, but in itself it also shows the difference, the gap.”
Gross said the prayer was clearly an attempt to show the two churches united, especially in confronting the global conflicts and projecting a message of unity. Such optics, he said, were in continuity with the visit to the Vatican in October by the king.
“It’s a doubling down of togetherness,” he said.
Her appointment though has split the Anglican Communion, whose 100 million members in 165 countries are deeply divided over issues such as the role of women and the treatment of LGBTQ+ people. Many in England and other Western countries hailed her appointment as a historic breaking of a stained-glass ceiling.
But the communion’s largest and fastest-growing churches in Africa belong to a conservative group called the Global Anglican Future Conference, or Gafcon, which has sharply criticized her appointment and threatened a final break. In the U.S., the conservative Anglican Church in North America formed in a break from the more liberal U.S. and Canadian Episcopal churches and has signed onto the Gafcon statement opposing Mullally’s appointment.
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