By Fr Hugh MacKenzie
On Tuesday the funeral of Her Royal Highness Katharine Duchess of Kent will take place in the Cathedral. This will be the first Catholic royal funeral in modern history, made all the more historic by the presence of their Majesties King Charles and Queen Camilla.
While the funeral ceremonies are a private, family affair, we chaplains here have the great privilege of concelebrating at the Requiem Mass. This has a particular significance for me because, by a strange providence, Her Royal Highness also attended my own ordination here in the Cathedral.
That happened because, shortly after the Duchess became a Catholic, she visited the English College in Rome while on retreat there. I was the Guest Master there at the time and showed her around. When I mentioned that I was to be ordained priest that summer she expressed an ardent desire to attend.
So, it was not because I was important or well-connected in any way. She told me how happy she was to have found her true home in the Catholic faith and now she wanted to experience all the riches of the Church’s liturgical and sacramental life. For me, there is a fitting symmetry in being able to offer Holy Mass for her soul, the Sacrament of Sacraments, in the same Cathedral thirty years later.
As many others have noted, she came across as a lady of great humility and gentleness, with a quiet dignity and generosity of spirit. Her life of largely unseen service to God’s little ones was a wonderful counterpoint to this age of ‘celebrity’ and self-promotion. So much that she did was behind the scenes, yet she touched many lives, proving that you don’t need to be on social media in order to be an ‘influencer’.
We thank God that she is one with us in the family of the Church, the “communion of saints” that encompasses both the living and the dead. We pray for the repose of her soul and ask that she may indeed rest in peace.