King Charles III and Pope Leo XIV put a 500-year-long argument behind them, as the two men prayed together at a service inside Vatican City’s Sistine Chapel.

England split from the Catholic Church under Henry VIII in 1534, after the Vatican refused to annul his first marriage. In order to secure the divorce he craved, which would allow him to marry Anne Boleyn, Henry established the Church of England and appointed himself its supreme governor.

Neither Henry nor any of his predecessors, dating back to 1066, ever met the pope. That was repeated faithfully until the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, who met four popes but drew the line at praying with them.

All that changed on Thursday when the two men bowed their heads under the same roof, decorated with Michelangelo’s frescoes, in a symbolic

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