King Charles has made history after becoming the first reigning British monarch to pray publicly with a pope since Henry VIII split from Rome in 1534, an event perceived as a symbolic step in the reconciliation between the Catholic and Anglican churches.

Axar.az, citing The Guardian, reports that the monarch and his wife, Queen Camilla, joined Pope Leo for a service under Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, where in May Leo was elected the first US pontiff to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

The royal visit to the Vatican state comes at a sensitive time for Charles, 76, after his brother, Prince Andrew, agreed to give up his use of the Duke of York title amid concern about his relationship with the late convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The king, however, appeared to be in good spirits. Before the service, when he was greeted by Leo inside the Apostolic Palace, where the pontiff lives, the monarch pointed to the cameras recording the event and joked they were “a constant hazard”. Leo, 70, responded: “You get used to it.”