King Charles met Pope Leo at the Vatican on Thursday for their first meeting since the American-born pope’s election earlier this year. The two held private talks, prayed together in the Sistine Chapel, and shared lighthearted moments—Charles joking about the cameras as “a constant hazard,” to which the Pope replied, “You get used to it.”
Their prayer marked a historic moment: the first time in over 500 years, since Henry VIII in 1534, that a reigning British monarch prayed publicly with a pope.