The last Catholic monarch of Great Britain was the witty, urbane, and dissolute Charles II. He was reportedly received into the Church on his deathbed in 1685.
But Catholics were anathema in the 17th century. Charles II’s successor, his brother, James II, was already a Catholic. So horrid was the prospect of a Papist dynasty that James was forced into exile and a Protestant couple was installed on the throne. Under the Act of Settlement of 1701, any royal who became a Catholic or married a Catholic forfeited his (or her) right to succeed to the throne.
Three centuries passed before another royal became a Catholic in Britain. This was, to use her official title, Her Royal Highness, Katharine, The Duchess of Kent. In 1994, after seeking permission from Queen Elizabeth II, she was received into the Church. She died earlier this month at the age of 92.
Katharine, as she preferred to be known in her later years, was a beloved figure. The wedding of the radiantly beautiful bride and the Duke of Kent was one of the first televised royal weddings and was attended by an estimated 2,000 guests.
Many remembered a touching moment when she hugged a sobbing Jana Novotná on the centre court after she had just lost the Wimbledon final to Steffi Graf.
After her death the senior Catholic churchman in England, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, tweeted: “I recall with fondness her presence in our community, especially her participation in the pilgrimage to Lourdes, as well as her lifetime of public service.”
Royal watching is a blood sport in the UK, but no one has had a harsh word for the Duchess. She was remembered by one and all for her simplicity, graciousness, and humility.
Born in 1933 as Katharine Lucy Mary Worsley, she married the Duke of Kent, a first cousin of the Queen, in 1961. The couple had three surviving children, but there were two tragedies.
In 1973 Katharine contracted rubella while she was pregnant with her fourth child. Doctors advised her to have an abortion because the child might have had serious birth defects. She agreed.
Four years later, in 1977, she was again pregnant and sent a message to a meeting of the British Congress of Obstetrics in which she said that human life was a gift from God and uniquely valuable. She praised those who were fighting to protect life and the family.
Unfortunately, her child was stillborn. Katharine was heartbroken. According to an obituary in The Telegraph (London), she felt that “the miscarriage [was] a punishment for the earlier termination”.
“It had the most devastating effect on me,” she said many years later. “I had no idea how devastating such a thing could be to any woman. It has made me extremely understanding of others who suffer a stillbirth.”
In her distress, she thought deeply about becoming a Catholic and was eventually received into the Church by Cardinal Basil Hume in 1994 at a private ceremony in Westminster Cathedral attended by her husband, her children – and 300 journalists.
“I do love guidelines and the Catholic Church offers you guidelines. I have always wanted that in my life,” she explained in a BBC interview. “I like to know what’s expected of me. I like being told: You shall go to church on Sunday and if you don’t, you’re in for it!”
After 2002 she asked the Queen to be dispensed from her duties as a royal. Instead, she devoted herself to humdrum social service, like teaching music in a local government primary school in Hull, where the children called her Miss Katharine.
“I was just known as Mrs Kent,” she told The Telegraph in 2022. “Only the head knew who I was. The parents didn’t know and the pupils didn’t know. No one ever noticed. There was no publicity about it at all—it just seemed to work.”
She also founded a charity, Future Talent, to give children from underprivileged backgrounds an opportunity to excel in music.
Katharine participated quietly in activities in her local Catholic parish. She worked at Westminster Cathedral’s shelter for the homeless in London, served at Lourdes each summer, and answered calls anonymously on a hotline for the Samaritans, a suicide prevention charity.
The Duchess is survived by her husband, the Duke of Kent, her three children, George, Earl of St Andrews, Lady Helen Taylor, and Lord Nicholas Windsor, and ten grandchildren.
