Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally traveled to Rome this weekend to meet Pope Leo XIV—a visit she called a pilgrimage, akin to the one she took to prepare for her installation at Canterbury.
Her four-day visit included a private meeting with the pope at the Vatican on Monday morning, after which both leaders gave an address and exchanged gifts. Mullally then joined Leo at a prayer service at the Chapel of Urban III where the pope presided and the two said grace together.
Mullally’s visit follows past archbishops of Canterbury who have traveled to see the pope since 1966, encounters that reinvented ecumenical relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England, as well as the wider Anglican Communion. But what was most remarkable about this visit was the optics: the sight of Mullally, the first woman archbishop of Canterbury, standing shoulder to shoulder and kneeling in prayer with the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, which still maintains a male-only priesthood.
