The Most Revd Dame Sarah Mullally will be received by the Pope during her visit to Rome from 25 to 28 April. The announcement comes two days after her official installation as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of the Anglican Communion.
Vatican News The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, will meet Pope Leo XIV during her visit to Rome, scheduled from 25 to 28 April. The official announcement of the visit comes two days after her official installation in Canterbury Cathedral. On Thursday, in the Chapel of Our Lady of Martyrdom, the archbishop participated in a meeting and common prayer with Cardinal Kurt Koch, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and a high-level Catholic delegation. A letter from the Pope The event commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Common Declaration of 24 March 1966—the first formal ecumenical declaration between the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church, signed by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey. On the occasion, Cardinal Koch delivered a letter of good wishes and blessings from Pope Leo to Archbishop Mullally at the start of her public ministry in the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion. Archbishop Mullally’s gratitude A statement released by Lambeth Palace said the Archbishop thanked the Pope for his prayers and assured him of her own. “I am deeply grateful for his kind letter and for the assurance of his prayers on the occasion of my installation as Archbishop of Canterbury,” she wrote. “His words of encouragement and his invocation of the guidance of the Holy Spirit are received with deep appreciation.” “As Archbishop of Canterbury,” Mullally continued in her message to Pope Leo XIV, “I too am called to serve as an instrument of communion within the Anglican Communion and to seek the full and visible unity to which the Lord calls us all.” Concluding, she added: “I look forward to meeting His Holiness soon and to continuing to strengthen the bonds of friendship and our shared commitment.”