NUNTIATORIA

Beyond Diplomacy: The Unconscionable Blessing of Adultery

The Telegraph has revealed that Pope Francis privately blessed the twentieth wedding anniversary of King Charles and Queen Camilla during their April audience at the Vatican.¹ What might seem to the world as a quaint gesture of goodwill is, in reality, a scandal of the gravest order. It is a papal endorsement of a union born of adultery, a humiliation of the See of Peter, and a desecration of Christian teaching on marriage. Both monarchy and papacy, once regarded as guardians of fidelity, here collude in a public act that trivialises vows, profanes oaths, and mocks divine law.

Marriage as Indissoluble
The Catholic Church has never wavered in teaching the indissolubility of marriage. Canon law is unambiguous: “A marriage that is ratified and consummated cannot be dissolved by any human power or by any cause other than death.”² Pope Leo XIII wrote in Arcanum divinae sapientiae that “the marriage bond is, by the will of God, so closely tied that it can in no way be loosened by man.”³ Pius XI in Casti connubii declared that Christian matrimony “can never be dissolved by any civil law.”⁴

By this measure, the situation of Queen Camilla is plain. Her first marriage, contracted in 1973 to Andrew Parker Bowles in a Catholic ceremony, was a sacramental bond presumed valid and indissoluble.⁵ Divorce did not dissolve it. The civil wedding of Charles and Camilla in 2005, followed by an Anglican service of prayer, therefore lacked sacramental character. While Charles, as a widower, was free to marry after Diana’s death, Camilla was not. To bless their anniversary was to bless what the Gospel calls adultery.

The Monarch’s Betrayal of Oaths
Charles’s personal infidelity was compounded by the solemn oaths he has sworn in public office. At his coronation he placed his hand on the Gospels and vowed to “maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel.”⁶ This came after a lifetime of disregard for the sanctity of marriage, of carrying on an adulterous liaison while wed to Diana, and of finally wedding his mistress in a civil ceremony. To stand before the Pope and receive a blessing on this anniversary was to make a mockery of the coronation oath and to reduce the monarchy to theatre—a pageant of sentiment rather than a symbol of fidelity.

The Corruption of Ceremony
The coronation of Charles III in Westminster Abbey compounded this hypocrisy. At the beginning of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, divorced persons were not permitted to be presented at Court, nor even to appear in the monarch’s presence at formal occasions.⁷ This prohibition reflected the seriousness with which society once regarded marriage. Yet at his coronation in 2023, Charles and Camilla—themselves emblematic of adultery—stood crowned in the Abbey of St Edward the Confessor, the saint-king whose fidelity and chastity had sanctified his throne.

The coronation liturgy retained the outward form of a Holy Communion service, but in a striking departure the King abstained from receiving the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood.⁸ To wear the crown without first kneeling to receive the Bread of Heaven was to hollow out the rite of its deepest sacramental meaning. Historically, English coronations centred on this moment: Edward II in 1308, Henry VIII in 1509, and James II in 1685 all received Holy Communion at the altar, a visible testimony that their reigns must be nourished by divine grace.⁹ To omit this is to reduce the coronation to pageantry.

The liturgy was further shortened by the deliberate removal of the penitential rite, Archbishop Justin Welby cutting confession of sin in order to keep to television schedules.¹⁰ Thus, the King and nation entered a solemn act of worship without first humbling themselves before God. In the words of St Augustine, *“He only is a king who rules not by serving his own passions but by obeying God’s law.”*¹¹ To enthrone an unrepentant adulterer without penitence and without Communion is to enthrone not righteousness but rebellion. St Gregory the Great warned the Emperor Maurice that authority is safe only when subjected to the judgment of God: *“Power is then safe when he who exercises it subjects himself to the power of the Almighty Judge.”*¹² By abandoning penitence and sacrament, the modern coronation has severed kingship from its divine foundation.

The Pope’s Betrayal of Office
If the King betrayed his vows, the Pope betrayed his office. The task of the Roman Pontiff is to confirm the brethren in the truth (Luke 22:32) and to guard the indissolubility of marriage as Christ commanded: “What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt. 19:6). Yet Francis has hollowed the papal office into a vessel of ambiguity. His declaration Fiducia Supplicans (2023) reduced blessings to gestures of goodwill, detached from doctrine.¹³ The blessing of Charles and Camilla’s anniversary was not an accident, but the logical fruit of this relativism: a sentimental performance that comforted an adulterous union and confused the faithful.

Modernism’s Poison
This moment illustrates the very errors condemned by Pope St Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907). Modernism, he warned, is “the synthesis of all heresies,” a system in which doctrines “are to be held only as long as they are practical” (§39), and truth is subordinated to “the needs of the believer” and the “impulse of the heart” (§7).¹⁴ Here modernism bore its fruit. Charles treats marriage vows as pliable to his personal fulfilment. Francis treats blessings as flexible to pastoral optics. Both reduce eternal law to circumstance and truth to emotion.

Emotionalism Above Propriety
What one expects of a pope in dealings with heads of state is diplomacy — the exercise of courtesy, the exchange of greetings, and the assurance of prayers for health and stability. Such gestures are legitimate; they belong to the realm of prudence and international relations. But what Pope Francis did in blessing the anniversary of King Charles and Queen Camilla went far beyond diplomacy. It was not a neutral act of goodwill but a moral endorsement of adultery, a gesture that confused the faithful and betrayed the clarity of Christ’s teaching. Courtesy can never justify complicity in sin. To conflate diplomatic politeness with sacramental blessing is to cross the line from pastoral sensitivity into pastoral treachery. It was, simply put, unconscionable.

What governed this act was not truth but emotionalism—the elevation of feeling over principle, sentiment over doctrine, optics over propriety. Charles sought public sympathy for his personal happiness. Francis sought to appear merciful and diplomatic. Both ignored the eternal command of Christ: “Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery” (Mark 10:11). Emotionalism triumphed; truth was silenced. The monarchy became spectacle, the papacy theatre.

The Collapse of Authority
Institutions that once embodied permanence now appear captive to fashion. The monarchy, once a symbol of continuity, is reduced to rehabilitating scandal by sentimental display. The papacy, once revered as the guardian of truth, is reduced to offering blessings emptied of meaning. Westminster Abbey, consecrated by faith, is profaned as a backdrop for hypocrisy. In the pursuit of sentiment, all is sacrificed: rationality, objectivity, morality. Oaths become mere ceremony, vows mere performance, blessings mere courtesies.

A Common Mockery
In this episode, throne and altar were united not in fidelity but in betrayal. The King mocked his vows; the Pope mocked his office. Both mocked Christ, whose teaching on marriage is unambiguous. What was heralded as a “historic moment” was in reality a humiliation of monarchy and papacy alike, a sign of how modernism and emotionalism hollow out institutions until nothing remains but spectacle.

The faithful are not bound to applaud such betrayals. They are bound to recognise them as warnings. Where oaths are treated as theatre and office as pageantry, the Gospel is silenced, the sacraments profaned, and Christ betrayed. 🔝

1. Hannah Furness, “Pope Francis blessed the King and Queen’s anniversary despite their divorces,” The Telegraph, 28 Aug. 2025.
2. Code of Canon Law, can. 1141.
3. Leo XIII, Arcanum divinae sapientiae (1880), §23.
4. Pius XI, Casti connubii (1930), §34.
5. People, “Who Is Andrew Parker Bowles? Queen Camilla’s First Husband,” May 1, 2023; cf. Wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles (2005).
6. Hugo Vickers, Royal Orders and Etiquette at Court (London: Collins, 1997), pp. 112–114.
7. The Coronation Order of Service, Westminster Abbey, 6 May 2023.
8. J. Wickham Legg (ed.), English Coronation Records (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1901), pp. 271–277; E. C. Dewick (ed.), Coronation Book of King Henry VIII (London: Roxburghe Club, 1902), pp. 45–49; Francis Sandford, The History of the Coronation of James II (London, 1687), pp. 112–118.
9. Harriet Sherwood, “Welby trims Coronation liturgy to suit television schedules,” The Guardian, 7 May 2023.
10. St Augustine, City of God, Book IV, ch. 4.
11. St Gregory the Great, Epistolae, XI, 64 (Letter to Emperor Maurice).
12. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia Supplicans (18 Dec 2023), nn. 31, 38–40.
13. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), §§7, 13, 39.
14. Matt. 19:6; Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18 (Douay-Rheims).
15. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2384.