James O'Reilly
Just over a month after becoming the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican.
The new leader of the Anglican Church began her speech with this phrase from the Bible:
“For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall…”
She went on to thank the Pope for his kind welcome, which was part of what she called her pilgrimage to Rome along with other members of the Anglican Church.
Your Holiness, Thank you for your gracious welcome, and for your prayers and kind wishes at the time of my installation. I am deeply grateful. It is a joy and a privilege to be received by you, together with this delegation.
After extending his formal welcome, Pope Leo for his part addressed some of the challenges in Catholic-Anglican relations:
This focus on the need for unity for the sake of a more fruitful evangelization has been a theme throughout my own ministry.
While much progress has been made on some historically divisive issues, new problems have arisen in recent decades, rendering the pathway to full communion more difficult to discern. I know that the Anglican Communion is also facing many of these same questions at this time. Nevertheless, we must not allow these continuing challenges to prevent us from using every possible opportunity to proclaim Christ to the world together.
The two leaders then proceeded to exchange gifts—for example, Archbishop Mullally gave the Pope a book by St. John Henry Newman, who was recently declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Leo himself.
The gift exchange was then followed by a short time of prayer presided over by Pope Leo XIV. This historic moment comes not long after another back in October 2025—when the King of England and the Pope prayed together in the Sistine Chapel.
