Pope Leo acknowledges ‘complex’ relationship with Anglicans during meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury

Relations between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion have “been complex,” according to Pope Leo XIV as he met the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally in the Vatican on Monday.

She is the first woman to lead the Church of England and the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion.

The pontiff noted that this year is the 60th anniversary of the first formal ecumenical statement between the Anglican and Catholic Churches, signed in 1966 at St. Paul’s Outside the Walls basilica by Archbishop Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI.

However, relations have become different between the two bodies, with the Church of England naming its first priest in 1994, and its first bishop in 2015.

The first female Anglican priests were ordained in 1994, its first female bishop in 2015, and now Mullally as the first archbishop of Canterbury. However, women priests were named earlier in other Anglican churches in the Western world.

“While much progress has been made on some historically divisive issues, new problems have arisen in recent decades, rendering the pathway to full communion more difficult to discern,” Pope Leo said.

“I know that the Anglican Communion is also facing many of these same