Queen Elizabeth Meets with Pope Francis

Two sovereigns in Rome: Queen Elizabeth II visits pope

AFP News | April 3, 2014

Vatican City (AFP) - Queen Elizabeth II meets Pope Francis for the first time on Thursday on a visit that coincides with the anniversary of the start of the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina.

The royal, who is "supreme governor" of the Church of England, will also be meeting the Argentine pope against the backdrop of thorny Anglican-Catholic relations.

The foreign trip, a rarity these days for the 87-year-old monarch, had to be postponed last year because she was unwell. She will be accompanied by her 92-year-old husband Prince Philip.

While the talks are likely to be purely formal, Anglican-Catholic ties are an issue because of resentment in Britain over the Vatican's move to bring in hundreds of conservative Anglican priests who dissented from the Church of England over female ordination.

The queen has visited the Vatican twice during her reign -- once to meet John XXIII in 1961 and again in 2000 to see John Paul II -- both of whom are being made saints in a first-ever double papal canonisation later this month.

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