Swedish royals meet the Pope

On Monday, the Pope received Queen Silvia, who was accompanied by Princess Madeleine and Chris O'Neill and their daughter Princess Leonore, in audience in the Apostolic Palace. The Queen and Princess Madeleine are in Rome to attend a conference on trafficking, a cause they have both been closely involved with and which Pope Francis singled out for attention in his New Year address.
This was Princess Leonore's first major public appearance, and the photos of Queen Silvia seated with her granddaughter, who clutches the Pope's finger, reminds one of the photo of Princess Madeleine at the age of seven, standing on her toes as she is kissed on the head by Pope John Paul II, a photo Queen Silvia keeps on her desk.
Interestingly, Queen Silvia chose to abide with the dress code for papal audiences that stipulates a long black dress and veil for women other than the Catholic wives of Catholic kings, who wear white, although other Protestant queens have abandoned it in recent years. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark wore a grey day dress and hat for an audience with Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, while Queen Elizabeth II of Britain wore a mauve day dress and hat when she and Prince Philip were received by Pope Francis a year ago.
Chris O'Neill rarely accompanies his wife to official events that are not family events, but in this case his presence was clearly due to the fact that he is a Catholic. Queen Silvia, who was born in Germany to a German father and Brazilian mother and raised in Brazil, is a Lutheran and has always been so. Her Brazilian mother's funeral was held in a Lutheran church in Heidelberg, Germany, which suggests that her mother was also a Protestant.

Two popes canonised

Three monarchs were present at an open air mass in St Peter's Square in the Vatican City this morning as the late popes John XXIII and John Paul II were canonised by the current Pope.
John Paul II, who reigned from 1978 till his death in 2005, was beatified in 2011 and his canonisation is the fastest since saints ceased being declared by local acclamation and became the exclusive prerogative of the reigning pontiff nearly a thousand years ago. John XXIII, whose pontificate lasted from 1958 to his death in 1963, was beatified in 2000.
The Catholic Church normally requires two so-called "miracles" for someone to be declared saints, but Pope Francis chose to waive this rule in the case of John XXIII, as he has done in other recent cases. It is assumed that Pope Francis may feel some sort of identification with the folksy, easy-going, much-loved John XXIII.
It is the first time that two popes have been canonised at the same time and it has been suggested that Pope Francis chose to canonise the progressive John XXIII together with the conservative John Paul II, whose canonisation he "inherited" from his predecessor, in order to appeal to progressives as well as conservatives, although this has been denied by the Vatican, which insists that they do no make such political considerations.
The canonisation mass drew huge crowds to the Vatican, and among the guests were members of several Catholic royal families. The King and Queen of Spain, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and the Sovereign Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein headed the guest list, while the King of the Belgians was represented by his parents, King Albert and Queen Paola. It was interesting to note that Queen Paola, like Queen Sofía and Grand Duchess Maria Teresa, exercised the privilège du blanc, which gives the wives of Catholic monarchs the right to wear white rather than black in the presence of the Pope. However, Queen Paola wore black for a private audience with Pope Francis yesterday (while her daughter, Princess Astrid, wore a white jacket over a black dress). Princess Marie of Liechtenstein wore black, indicating that the privilege has still not been extended to the consort of the Sovereign Prince of Liechtenstein.
The only Protestant royal house represented was the British (although Britain is officially a Protestant country there are now almost more Catholics than Anglicans in Britain), which sent the Duke of Gloucester, a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, and his wife.
The Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg were accompanied by their daughter-in-law, Hereditary Grand Duchess Stéphanie, and two of their sons, Louis and Sébastien. Prince Nikolaus of Liechtenstein, who is his country's ambassador to the Holy See, attended with his Luxembourgian wife Margaretha (their was the last marriage between two reigning European royal houses), their son Josef-Emanuel, and one of their daughters (Maria-Anunciata, I believe).
Also in attendance were Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland and his predecessor but one Aleksander Kwasniewski, and President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Belgian royal wedding in Rome on 3 July

The Belgian TV channel VTM yesterday reported that the wedding of Prince Amedeo and Elisabetta Rosboch von Wolkenstein, who announced their engagement a month ago, will take place in Rome, where the bride was born, on 3 July. However, it was not made clear whether this referred to the actual wedding or the religious blessing of the marriage, or if both will take place at the same time in the same place.
VTM also reported that the groom's grandparents, King Albert and Queen Paola, will go to Rome at the end of next month to represent King Philippe at the canonisation of Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII on 27 April. It will be interesting to see if Queen Paola will exercise the privilège du blanc now that she is no longer the wife of a reigning monarch, but as Queen Fabiola has done so in her widowhood I expect Queen Paola to follow suit.

My latest article: Trouble with the Vatican

Princess Madeleine’s marriage to Christopher O’Neill on 8 June will be the third time in a century that a Swedish princess marries a Catholic. In the June issue of the British monthly magazine Majesty (Vol. 34, No. 6), which went on sale in Britain on Thursday and will soon be on sale in other major European cities, I write about the trouble with the Vatican on the two previous occasions.
Both in 1926, when Princess Astrid married the heir to the Belgian throne, Prince Léopold, and in 1961, when Princess Birgitta married Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern, there were delicate negotiations between the families and the Catholic Church, which on both occasions forced the families to back down on their plans for the wedding, allowing only a civil ceremony to take place in Stockholm instead of the religious ceremonies wanted by the families. In 1926 the Swedish Archbishop, Nathan Söderblom, apparently thought he had found a way of fooling the Vatican, but this seems to have backfired when the situation next arose, causing some bitterness to Princess Birgitta.

Le privilège du blanc

Pope Francis’s inauguration mass in Rome today was a good opportunity to observe one of the intricacies of papal etiquette, namely what is known as le privilège du blanc (the privilege of white).
Women are generally expected to wear black in the presence of the Pope, although not all follow this guideline (for instance, Queen Margrethe wore grey last time she visited the Vatican). But since an unknown date there has been an exception made for the wives of Catholic kings, who have been allowed to wear white in the Pope’s presence.
In former days, this included the Empress of Austria-Hungary as well as the queens of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Bavaria, Belgium and Poland (but apparently not the Queen of Saxony, probably because the country did not share the royal family’s Catholic faith), but after the disapperance of most European monarchies the privilege of white today extends only to the Queens of Belgium and Spain, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg and female captains regent (i.e. heads of state) of San Marino.
Other female members of royal families (except Italian princesses, I believe) and Catholic wives of Protestant monarchs (such as Máxima of the Netherlands will be when her husband ascends the Dutch throne on 30 April) do not have the privilege, which also does not extend to the wives of sovereign princes. Or at least it did not do so until recently.
While her mother-in-law, Princess Grace, always wore black when meeting popes, Princess Charlène of Monaco wore white when she and Sovereign Prince Albert II were received in an audience by Pope Benedict XVI on 12 January this year. The Vatican Press Office subsequently stated that “in accordance with prescribed ceremonial of the Vatican for Catholic sovereigns, the princess was allowed to dress in white”.
However, Princess Charlène wore black at the inauguration today, and the Princess of Liechtenstein was not present, so it seems unclear whether the privilege has really been extended to the wives of Catholic sovereign princes. The Queen of Spain was also absent, but the Queen of the Belgians and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg both wore white.
However, it might also be noted that there have been occasions when ladies enjoying the le privilège du blanc have chosen not to make use of it, the most recent example I can think of being the late Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg, who wore black the last time she and Grand Duke Jean were received by Pope John Paul II before the Grand Duke’s abdication in 2000.

An Argentine Pope: Francis I

Some minutes after 7 p.m. today white smoke emerged from the Sixtine Chapel in the Vatican, announcing to the world that the papal conclave had elected a new pontiff on the fifth ballott. The choice fell on 76-year-old Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, who chose to reign under the name of Francis.
The new Pope is the first Latin American pontiff and the first non-European since Gregory III, who reigned from 731 to 741. He is also the first Jesuit Pope, and reportedly chose the name Francis I in honour of Saint Francis Xavier (Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta), one of the co-founders of the Jesuit order, or Saint Francis of Assisi. Except for John Paul I, who became the first pope to assume a double name when combining the names of his two immediate predecessors, Francis I is the first pontiff to choose an entirely new name since the little-known Lando, who reigned briefly from 913 to 914.
It remains to be seen whether he will be officially styled Francis I or just Francis. It is not unusual for the first monarch of a name not to use a numeral; for instance, the English sovereign now called Elizabeth I was generally known as simply Queen Elizabeth until 1952, when Elizabeth II came along, like Queen Victoria will become known as Victoria I if there one day is a Victoria II. Among the current European monarchs we find Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands without an ordinal, but King Juan Carlos I of Spain with one.

Pope announces abdication

Abdication seems to be en vogue among the monarchs of Europe these days. Two weeks after Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands announced that she will renounce the crown on 30 April, Pope Benedict XVI today made known his intention to step down from the papal throne on 28 February.
While it is something of a tradition for Dutch monarchs to abdicate, it is nearly six centuries since last time a pope did so. In older history there are several popes who have been deposed, but few have stepped down voluntarily.
The news of Pope Benedict's abdication should nevertheless not come as a complete surprise, as he has earlier said that he considered it a pope's duty to step down if unable to carry out his role. For Pope Benedict XVI, who will be 86 in April, this moment has now come.
Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected pope in April 2005 in succession to John Paul II, who died a few weeks short of his 85th birthday after having suffered ill-health for years.
As on the death of a pope, a conclave of cardinals will be convened to elect the next pontiff, an election in which Benedict XVI will himself not be able to vote.

On this date: Golden wedding of Princess Birgitta and Prince Johann Georg

Today is the golden wedding anniversary of Princess Birgitta (née of Sweden) and Prince Johann Georg of Hohenzollern, who were married in a civil ceremony at the Royal Palace in Stockholm on 25 May 1961 and in a religious ceremony at the palace church in Sigmaringen on 30 May.
The civil ceremony is under German law the only legally valid wedding and the Princess says in an anniversary interview with Svensk Damtidning (no 21 – 2011) that she and “Hansi” have always celebrated 25 May as their wedding anniversary. This year the celebrations will for practical reasons take place a week later, but it will only be a small event attended by their three children as well as their children-in-law and grandchildren.
Princess Birgitta, who is the second eldest of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden’s four elder sisters, was the only of the siblings to marry a prince and thus retained the style of Royal Highness as well as her membership of the Swedish royal house. Prince Johann Georg is an art historian who before his retirement was head of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.
He still lives in Munich, where the couple settled after their wedding. However, Princess Birgitta moved to Mallorca in 1990 and dedicates most of her time to playing golf. The Princess is completely open about the state of her marriage, but insists that they remain very good friends and that their living apart was a natural consequence of the fact that they realised how different they are after the children moved out.
Nevertheless they keep up appearances by for instance attending the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel together and Princess Birgitta was publicly furious when her husband some years ago turned up at an event accompanied by his considerably younger mistress.
In the interview with Svensk Damtidning Princess Birgitta gives some interesting facts about the religious complications connected to her marrying a Catholic (“religious differences” had by the way been the official explanation when Princess Birgitta turned down Shah Mohamed Reza of Iran’s proposal). The Princess and her grandfather Gustaf VI Adolf wished for a Swedish priest to bless the couple during the civil wedding in Stockholm. The King was quite certain that this could be arranged, but Pope Johannes (John) XXIII himself vetoed it.
The Princess, who is herself a believer, remains disappointed about this to this day and is also still indignant that “they forced me to sign a paper saying that I should live as a Catholic and raise my children as Catholics. [...] I had nothing against my children being raised as Catholics, but you simply don’t do that”, says Princess Birgitta, who has since “distanced” herself from the Catholic church.
However, Princess Birgitta does not touch on the similarities between her situation and the events of 1926, when Princess Astrid of Sweden married the heir to the Belgian throne, the future Léopold III. Back then King Gustaf V wanted there to be both a Lutheran and a Catholic wedding, an idea which was acceptable to King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians. However, Pope Pius XI made it clear to King Albert that this would not be tolerated. Queen Victoria suggested a Te Deum in Stockholm, which King Albert and Queen Elisabeth also thought a good compromise, but which was again vetoed by the Catholic church.
In the end the civil wedding in Stockholm which preceded the religious wedding in Brussels was entirely secular, but at his own initiative the Swedish Archbishop, Nathan Söderblom, took the newlyweds aside after the ceremony and gave them his blessing privately. The future Queen Astrid eventually converted to Catholicism in 1930. One may wonder if the Vatican’s actions in 1961 were not to a certain extent a consequence of the events of 1926.

New books: The Papacy through 2000 years

Pope Benedict XVI’s controversial recent visit to Britain and his attempt at rewriting history by claiming that World War II was in reality a war against atheism provided a good opportunity to reflect on the near-total loss of moral authority which the Vatican has suffered since Benedict took over from his equally conservative, but more charismatic predecessor five years ago. This is, however, only the latest development in the two thousand years of papal history and, when one considers what the Papacy gone been through during those millennia, it feels almost inevitable that it will come through its latest moral crisis as well.
No institution has played such a great role over such a long time on the stage of European history as the Papacy. Yet its influence has been almost constantly changing throughout its long and complicated history, which has seen schism resulting in as many as four rival popes at the same time and reigns whose lengths have ranged between twelve days and 32 years.
It is thus a daunting task Roger Collins has taken upon himself in attempting to tell the history of the Papacy’s 2000 years in a single volume of some 500 pages. Yet, in Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, which was published last year and is now available in paperback, he must be said to have succeeded.
The book is lively and engagingly written and the centuries fly past as one reads. At such a pace it is almost unavoidable that the reader might occasionally find it a bit difficult to keep all the popes, antipopes, emperors and kings apart and sometimes the author himself makes mistakes in names, titles or dates.
It is also a given that the author cannot delve particularly deeply into it all, so that even the Reformation is only accorded a few paragraphs, but I cannot see how this could have been done differently without making the book swell into one of those tomes of 1000 pages or several volumes.
Collins’s book virtually ends in 1978 as he considers it too early to evaluate the impact of John Paul II’s long papacy and therefore restricts himself to suggesting what might be considered the strongest and weakest aspects of his reign. And the paedophilia scandals which have engulfed the Papacy recently were mostly revealed after the book went to print, thus making it impossible for the author to dwell upon the contrasts in the Papacy’s moral standing on the world scene during the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
As the book is mostly narrative rather than analytical I do miss a final chapter where the author could have summed up and given us his thoughts on the ever-changing role and influence of the Papacy throughout its existence. Nevertheless it works very well as an introduction to or a survey of the history of this longest-lasting of the central institutions of European history.

What to see: St Peter’s Square, the Vatican City

St Peter’s Square, one of the greatest works of the Roman baroque, was laid out between 1657 and 1667 by the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini on the orders of Pope Alexander VII. It is one of the greatest works of the Roman baroque and often counted as the very centre of the Christian world. When Bernini was given the task by the Pope, the square was to put it simply a mess which had to be completely rearranged.
Projecting from the façade of St Peter’s Basilica are two rectangular wings which frame the inner part of the square. The outer part of the square is in the shape of an ellipse, has a diameter of 240 metres from its northern to its southern end and is flanked by Doric colonnades on either side. Bernini himself described the colonnades as the “arms” of the church, stretching out in welcome to all visitors, believers and non-believers, and drawing them towards the church.
Because the colonnade is curved Bernini arranged the 284 columns four deep on radial axes and gradually increased their diameter in order not to disturb the proportions between spaces and columns. The colonnades are topped by 140 statues of saints, each measuring 3.1 metres in height, and six coats of arms of Alexander VII.

What to see: Princess Charlotte Frederikke's tomb, the Vatican

While many know that the former Queen Christina of Sweden found her last resting place in the crypt of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, few are aware that a princess who might have been queen of both Denmark and Norway rests in the Camposanto Teutonico next to St Peter’s.

Princess Charlotte Frederikke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1784-1840) was the first wife of the man who in 1814 briefly reigned as King Christian Frederik of Norway and later as King Christian VIII of Denmark in the years 1839-1848. Unlike many royal marriages of the time, theirs was obviously a love match. They married in 1805, had their only surviving child (the future Frederik VII) in 1808 and divorced in 1810 after it had been discovered that the Princess had an affair with her music teacher, Edouard du Pouy. That Prince Christian Frederik himself had a roving eye did not matter much at that time, when moral standards were very different for men and women. Apparently the couple only wanted a temporary separation, but a divorce was pushed through by King Frederik VI.
The Princess was banished to the small town of Horsens at a safe distance from Copenhagen. She met her ex-husband again when he returned from Norway in 1814, but no reconciliation was achieved.
In 1829 Princess Charlotte Frederikke moved to Rome, where she converted to Catholicism. She died in Rome on 13 July 1840, shortly after her ex-husband had ascended the throne of Denmark, and was laid to rest in the Germanic cemetery in the Vatican.
After her divorce she never again saw her son, who it would turn out had inherited perhaps too much from her both in looks and personality. When he became king in 1848, Frederik VII made sure that a suitable memorial was erected on his mother’s grave in the Vatican - it was executed by the sculptor Jens Adolf Jerichau in 1848-1849. 170 years after her death its upkeep remains the responsibility of the Danish Embassy in Rome.
The pictures show Princess Charlotte Frederikke’s tomb and a portrait of the young princess by F. C. Grøger, which hangs at Rosenborg Palace in Copenhagen.