The Duchess of Kent’s funeral will take place tomorrow, marking the first Catholic ceremony for a royal in modern British history. The King, Queen and other senior royals will attend the private service, which comes 12 days after Katharine died peacefully at home, surrounded by her family.
This afternoon, the Duchess of Kent’s coffin will be led to Westminster Cathedral by a military piper for a series of private funeral rites attended by the Duchess’s immediate family. In keeping with Catholic tradition, the coffin will travel from Kensington Palace to the Cathedral on Monday for a series of private funeral rites attended by the duchess’s immediate family.
At the start of the 3-mile journey to Westminster Cathedral a piper from The Royal Dragoon Guards, a regiment the duchess supported as deputy Colonel-in-Chief since its inception in 1992, will walk ahead of the coffin.
Other service personnel from the regiment will form the bearer party who will carry the coffin into the cathedral where it will rest overnight in the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The requiem mass, a Catholic funeral, will be held on Tuesday attended by the King, Queen and other senior royals and will be the first Catholic funeral service held for a member of the royal family in modern British history.
Katharine, wife of the late Queen’s cousin the Duke of Kent, was an extraordinary woman who famously converted to Catholicism in 1992 and 10 years later, she gave up full-time royal duties and her HRH title to pursue a life away from the spotlight.
A devout follower of the Roman Catholic faith, the duchess became the first member of the royal family to convert to Catholicism in more than 300 years. Her husband did not convert, so he remained in the line of succession.
It was her wish to have her funeral at Westminster Cathedral, marking the first royal funeral at the cathedral, in Victoria, central London, since its construction in 1903.
On Monday, the funeral rites will include a Vigil for the Deceased, Rite of Reception, which usually involves the coffin being sprinkled with holy water, and evening prayers known as Vespers will be taken by Bishop James Curry, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and Titular Bishop of Ramsbury.
The King will not be the first monarch to have attended a Catholic funeral, as Queen Elizabeth II attended the Catholic state funeral of King Baudouin of the Belgians, at St Michael’s Cathedral in Brussels, in August 1993.
But it’s been hailed as a significant moment ecumenical relations to have the King, who is head of the Church of England, and the heir to the throne attend the Catholic service.
Charles, when Prince of Wales, went to Pope John Paul II’s funeral, representing his mother the late Queen, in 2005, while his son William attended Pope Francis’s funeral mass earlier this year.