"Katharine, Duchess of Kent Katharine, Duchess of Kent, (born Katharine Lucy Mary Worsley; 22 February 1933) is a member of the British Royal Family. Her husband, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, is a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II. The Duchess of Kent gained attention for her conversion to Catholicism in 1994, the first member of the Royal Family to convert publicly since the passing of the Act of Settlement 1701. The Duchess of Kent is strongly associated with the world of music and has performed as a member of several choirs. Katharine Lucy Mary Worsley was born at Hovingham"
"to Roman Catholicism in 2003 and is the most senior descendant of Sophia to be barred as a result of his religion. More recently, Peter Phillips, the son of Anne, Princess Royal, and eleventh in line to the throne, married Autumn Kelly; Kelly had been brought up as a Roman Catholic, but she converted to Anglicanism prior to the wedding. Had she not done so, Phillips would have forfeited his place in the succession upon their marriage. Excluding those princesses who have married into Roman Catholic royal families, such as Marie of Edinburgh, Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg and Princess Beatrice"
"of Edinburgh, one member of the Royal Family (that is, with the style of ""Royal Highness"") has converted to Roman Catholicism since the passage of the Act: the Duchess of Kent, wife of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent who converted on 14 January 1994, but her husband did not lose his place in the succession because she was an Anglican at the time of their marriage. As well as being part of the law of the United Kingdom, the Act of Settlement was received into the laws of all the countries and territories over which the British monarch reigned. It"
"Roman Catholic ceremony on 29 June 1983 at Archbishop's House, London. Since the Act of Settlement 1701 prohibited anyone who married a Roman Catholic from succeeding to the throne, Prince Michael of Kent (at that time, 15th in the line of succession) forfeited his succession rights upon marrying Marie Christine. Prince Michael was reinstated to the line of succession to the British throne on 26 March 2015 with the successful passing of the Succession to the Crown Act 2013. Their children are members of the Church of England and have retained their rights of succession since birth. Prince and Princess"
"a member of the royal family has converted or become a member of the church; as a result, the Prince Consort Henrik converted from Catholicism before marrying the Queen in 1968, and Mary Donaldson also converted from Presbyterianism before marrying Crown Prince Frederik in 2004. With the Reformation in Denmark in 1536, Lutheran Christianity was established as the state religion. For the next century, in a time when religious wars swept Europe, harsh persecution of other faiths followed (Lutheran orthodoxy). Exceptions were granted only to foreign diplomats. For at least a period in the 16th century, small circles of clandestine"
"figures (often descendants of the recusant families) such as Paul Johnson; Peter Ackroyd; Antonia Fraser; Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC; Michael Martin, first Catholic to hold the office of Speaker of the House of Commons since the Reformation; Chris Patten, first Catholic to hold the post of Chancellor of Oxford since the Reformation; Piers Paul Read; Helen Liddel, Britain's High Commissioner to Australia; and former Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blair, have no difficulty making their Catholicism known in public life. The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was received into full communion with the Catholic Church in 2007. Catherine"
"Muriel Spark, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Siegfried Sassoon, G. K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Graham Greene, Malcolm Muggeridge, Katharine, Duchess of Kent, Kenneth Clark and Joseph Pearce. Members of the Royal family such as the Duchess of Kent and former Prime Minister Tony Blair have also converted to the Catholic Church, in Blair's case in December 2007 after he had left office. Since the establishment of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, over 3000 former Anglicans have been received into the Catholic Church via it. There are 38 ecclesiastical circumscriptions and 3,104 parishes. In 2011, in total there were roughly"
"her grandmother, the Duchess of Kent, had converted to Catholicism in 1994, it did not remove her grandfather, Prince Edward, from the line of succession as the duchess was Anglican at the time of their wedding in 1961. Her uncle, Lord Nicholas Windsor, converted to Catholicism in 2001, which removed him from the line of succession. In 2013 the Succession to the Crown Act was passed, granting Lady Amelia's father succession rights once again. Lady Amelia's two older siblings were confirmed in the Catholic faith and therefore gave up their succession rights. As such, she is the only heir of"
"on his deathbed). Charles' brother and heir James, Duke of York (later James II) converted to Catholicism in 1668–1669. When Titus Oates in 1678 alleged a (totally imaginary) 'Popish Plot' to assassinate Charles and put James in his place, he unleashed a wave of Parliamentary and public hysteria which led to anti-Catholic purges, and another wave of sectarian persecution, which Charles was either unable or unwilling to prevent. Throughout the early 1680s the Whig element in Parliament attempted to remove James as successor to the throne. Their failure saw James become, in 1685, Britain's first openly Catholic monarch since Mary"
"line of succession to the British throne. Since then her younger son, Lord Nicholas Windsor, her grandson, Edward Windsor, Lord Downpatrick, and her granddaughter Lady Marina Charlotte Windsor have also become Catholics. Her older son, the Earl of St Andrews, father of Lord Downpatrick, married a Catholic and thus had been excluded from the succession until the Succession to the Crown Act revoked that exclusion in 2015. The Dukedom of Kent is not subject to the Act of Settlement, so St Andrews' son and heir, Lord Downpatrick, is in line to become the first Roman Catholic Duke or Earl of"
"was baptised in the Private Chapel of Windsor Castle on 24 April 2004 by David Conner, the Dean of Windsor and her godparents were Lady Sarah Chatto, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, Lady Alexandra Etherington, Francesca Schwarzenbach and Rupert Elliott. Louise was the last royal baby to wear the original christening gown, which had been used in 1840 by her great-great-great-grandaunt, Victoria, Princess Royal, who was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria. Born with esotropia, Louise underwent an operation in an unsuccessful attempt to correct the problem in January 2006. She had further treatment in late 2013 that corrected her vision. She"
"to Catholicism before he became king and favoured the Catholics, and his replacement by son-in-law William III, a Dutch Protestant. The Act of Settlement 1701, which was passed by the Parliament of England, stated the heir to the throne must not be a ""Papist"" and that an heir who is a Catholic or who marries one will be excluded from the succession to the throne. This law was extended to Scotland through the Act of Union which formed the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Act was amended in 2013 as regards marriage to a Catholic and the ecumenical movement has"
"present day, more than 1,200 years in all, through kings of France, Navarre, France again, Spain, Portugal, and the Two Sicilies, dukes of Parma, grand dukes of Luxembourg, princes of Orléans, and emperors of Brazil. It is one of the oldest royal patrilines in Europe. Historians have been making the assertion that Henry IV was a convinced Calvinist, only changing his formal religious allegiance to adjust, suit or achieve his political goals. Henry IV was baptized a Roman Catholic on January 5, 1554. He was raised Reformed by his mother Jeanne III of Navarre. In 1572, after the massacre of"
"of Prince Juan Carlos of Spain and Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark. Princess Irene studied at the University of Utrecht, then went to Madrid to learn the Spanish language and became proficient enough to become an official interpreter. While studying Spanish in Madrid, Irene met Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma, eldest son of Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, Xavier. In the summer of 1963, Princess Irene secretly converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. The first time the public or the Royal Family knew about the conversion was when a photograph appeared on the front page of an Amsterdam"
"in the Society's list of friars. Michael Seed Father Michael Seed (born 1957) is a Latin Rite Catholic priest, a Franciscan friar, author, and former Ecumenical Advisor for over 25 years to the former Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Basil Hume then to Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Seed is known for his involvement in helping several British celebrities, members of the Royal Family and politicians decide whether to convert to Catholicism. Michael Seed was born as Steven Wayne Godwin in Manchester, 1957, to a young woman called Marie, and baptised into the Catholic Church as an infant. He was adopted in 1958 by"
"Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. On 30 March, the seventh day after her birth, it was announced that the Duke and Duchess of York had named her Eugenie Victoria Helena. She was baptised at St. Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, by the Bishop of Norwich on 23 December 1990. She was the first royal baby to have a public christening and the only one of the Queen's grandchildren not to be baptised in the Lily Font. Her godparents were James Ogilvy (her father's second cousin), Captain Alastair Ross (who was unable to attend), Susan Ferguson (her maternal grandfather's second wife), Julia Dodd-Noble,"
"is Prince Michael of Kent, who married Baroness Marie-Christine von Reibnitz in 1978; he was fifteenth in the line of succession at the time. He was restored to the line of succession in 2015 when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 came into force, and became 34th in line. The next most senior living descendant of the Electress Sophia who had been ineligible to succeed on this ground is George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, the elder son of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, who married the Roman Catholic Sylvana Palma Tomaselli in 1988. His son, Lord Downpatrick, converted"
"on those who marry Roman Catholics. The ban on Catholics themselves was retained to ensure that the monarch would be in communion with the Church of England. The changes came into effect across the Commonwealth realms on 26 March 2015, after legislation was made according to each realm's constitution. Following the changes coming into effect, the positions of the first 27 in line remained unchanged, including Princess Anne and her children and grandchildren, until the birth of Princess Charlotte of Cambridge on 2 May 2015. The first to be affected by the changes, on the day they came into effect"
"are still a force in the land."" Since the Council the Church in England has tended to focus on ecumenical dialogue with the Anglican Church rather than winning converts from it as in the past. However, the 1990s have seen a number of conversions from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church, largely prompted by the Church of England's decision to ordain women as priests (among other moves away from traditional doctrines and structures). The resultant converts included members of the Royal Family (Katharine, Duchess of Kent, her son Lord Nicholas Windsor and her grandson Baron Downpatrick), Graham Leonard (former Anglican Bishop"
"y Guillermo, was a film studies professor. Although societal attitudes were changing, because Guillermo was a Roman Catholic it was still possible that a marriage could cause a public scandal in the Netherlands such as the one that occurred in 1964 when Christina's sister Princess Irene married the Catholic Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma. Accordingly, Princess Christina, at that time ninth in line for the Dutch throne, renounced her and her descendants' rights to the throne before officially announcing her engagement on St. Valentine's Day, 1975. She converted to Catholicism in 1992. The couple were married on 28 June 1975,"
"alternative ""Margaret Rose"". Margaret was baptised in the private chapel of Buckingham Palace on 30 October 1930 by Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Margaret's early life was spent primarily at the Yorks' residences at 145 Piccadilly (their town house in London) and Royal Lodge in Windsor. The Yorks were perceived by the public as an ideal family: father, mother and children, but unfounded rumours that Margaret was deaf and mute were not completely dispelled until Margaret's first main public appearance at her uncle Prince George's wedding in 1934. She was educated alongside her sister, Princess Elizabeth, by their Scottish"
"family to be married there since the Reformation. As required by the Royal Marriages Act 1772, the Queen of the United Kingdom consented to the marriage. A House of Commons Early Day Motion welcomed ""the first overt marriage within the rites of the Catholic Church of a member of the Royal Family since the reign of Queen Mary I, and the first marriage of a member of the Royal Family to take place within the Vatican City State"". Lord and Lady Nicholas Windsor had their first child, a son, Albert Louis Philip Edward Windsor, on 22 September 2007 at the"
"Michael Seed Father Michael Seed (born 1957) is a Latin Rite Catholic priest, a Franciscan friar, author, and former Ecumenical Advisor for over 25 years to the former Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Basil Hume then to Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Seed is known for his involvement in helping several British celebrities, members of the Royal Family and politicians decide whether to convert to Catholicism. Michael Seed was born as Steven Wayne Godwin in Manchester, 1957, to a young woman called Marie, and baptised into the Catholic Church as an infant. He was adopted in 1958 by Joseph and Lillian Seed. During his"
"of London), Frances Shand Kydd (maternal grandmother of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex), and a number of Anglican priests. Converts to Catholicism in Britain occur for any number of reasons, not least from ""the mystical buoyant instinct"" within each person to grow toward a profounder expression of what they believe. The spirit of ecumenism fostered by Vatican II resulted in 1990 with the Catholic Church in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, joining Churches Together in Britain and Ireland as an expression of the churches' commitment to work ecumenically. Recently, for example, a memorial was"
"prompted generally positive comment about the possible social significance of a mixed-race member of the royal family. The ring Harry gave Markle was made by Cleave & Company Ltd., and consists of a large central diamond from Botswana, with two smaller diamonds from the jewellery collection of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales. Following the engagement, Markle announced she would retire from acting, and began the years-long process of becoming a British citizen. In preparation for the wedding, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, baptized Markle and confirmed her into the Church of England on March 6, 2018. The private"
"in 1620. This Humphrey was Dean of Ely and President of Queens' College, Cambridge and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University. Humphrey refused, saying that ""he had rather be Queen Elizabeth's subject than a foreign Prince"", leading to the ill-fated Frederick V, Elector Palatine (married to Elizabeth, daughter of James I and ancestor of the present Queen) becoming King for a year – a development that was a principal cause of the thirty years war. The most eminent member of the family, William Tyndale (c. 1494 – 1536), was the first translator of the Bible into modern English. His great work was"
"to hold the post of Chancellor of Oxford since the Reformation; Piers Paul Read; Helen Liddel, Britain's High Commissioner to Australia; and former Prime Minister's wife, Cherie Blair, have no difficulty making their Catholicism known in public life. The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was received into full communion with the Catholic Church in 2007. Catherine Pepinster, Editor of ""Tablet"", notes: ""The impact of Irish immigrants is one. There are numerous prominent campaigners, academics, entertainers (like Danny Boyle the most successful Catholic in showbiz owing to his film, ""Slumdog Millionaire""), politicians and writers. But the descendants of the recusant families"
"to do so until she genuinely believed it was the true religion. Astrid learned more about Catholicism and, several years later, in 1930, converted from genuine conviction. Her decision made her happy, and she confided to a close childhood friend: ""My soul has found peace."" Her father-in-law, King Albert I, who was very devout himself, repeated, on the day of Astrid's conversion: ""I am glad, very glad. Now all the family is united in the same religion."" On 17 February 1934, King Albert I died in a mountain-climbing accident in Marche-les-Dames, Belgium. Leopold and Astrid became the new King and"
"to the married quarters in Hong Kong and Germany while her husband was serving at the military. The couple later took numerous royal engagements on behalf of the Queen, including the Ugandan independence celebrations and the coronation of the King of Tonga. The Duchess of Kent was received into the Catholic Church in 1994. This was a personal decision, and she received the approval of the Queen. As she explained in an interview on BBC, ""I do love guidelines and the Catholic Church offers you guidelines. I have always wanted that in my life. I like to know what's expected"
"Council has been followed, as in other Western countries, by divisions between traditional Catholicism and a more liberal form of Catholicism claiming inspiration from the Council. This caused difficulties for not a few pre-conciliar converts, though others have still joined the Church in recent decades (for instance, Malcolm Muggeridge, Alec Guinness, and Joseph Pearce), and public figures (often descendants of the recusant families) such as Paul Johnson; Peter Ackroyd; Antonia Fraser; Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC; Michael Martin, first Catholic to hold the office of Speaker of the House of Commons since the Reformation; Chris Patten, first Catholic"
"the leading families of the majority Roman Catholic population. They also covered the non-conforming (""Dissenter"") Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians, where they: However, those protected by the Treaty were still excluded from public political life. The situation was confused by the policy of the Tory party in England and Ireland after 1688. They were Protestants who generally supported the Catholic Jacobite claim, and came to power briefly in London in 1710–14. Also in 1750 the main Catholic Jacobite heir and claimant to the three thrones, Charles Edward Stuart (""Bonny Prince Charlie""), converted to Anglicanism for a time, but had reverted"
"came into effect was George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews, who had married a Roman Catholic in 1988, and was restored to the line of succession in 34th place, after his father the Duke of Kent. The provision of the Act of Settlement requiring the monarch to be a Protestant continues, as the monarch remains the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Royal Marriages Act 1772 is repealed. Instead, only the first six persons in line to the throne require the Sovereign's approval to marry. Marriage without the Sovereign's consent would disqualify the person and the person's descendants"
"to see more far-reaching emancipation for Roman Catholics. The trend towards it had become irreversible but it was still a long time coming. It was over a quarter of a century later that the Emancipation Act of 1829 removed the bulk of the restrictions that continued to beset Roman Catholics. Even then, some survived. It was only in 1974 that it was formally enacted that a Roman Catholic may hold the office of Lord Chancellor and, to this day, it is only Roman Catholics who are barred, on religious grounds, from ascending the Throne. Robert Petre, 9th Baron Petre Robert"