LONDON (AP) — King Charles III is scheduled to have an audience with Pope Francis during a state visit next month to the Vatican, suggesting the Holy See is optimistic the pontiff will be back at work by then, barring any setbacks in his recovery from double pneumonia.
The tentative audience was among details of the British monarch’s visit to the Vatican and Italy released on Tuesday by Buckingham Palace. State visits are always planned in close consultation with the Vatican’s secretariat of state.
The palace separately confirmed that Charles wrote privately to the pope when he was taken ill. Francis, 88, has been hospitalized since Feb. 14. With gradual improvements, the Vatican said Monday it had suspended morning updates and is issuing less frequent medical bulletins. The next one is not expected before Wednesday.
The visit to the Vatican is symbolic of efforts to build closer ties between the Catholic Church and the Church of England, which split from Rome in the 16th century during the reign of King Henry VIII. Charles, who is head of the Church of England, made building bridges between people of all faiths a priority since he ascended the throne 2 1/2 years ago.
Charles’ three-day trip begins April 7 and it will also include events in Italy and its capital, Rome, which surrounds Vatican City.
In Rome, Charles will highlight the close links between Britain and Italy, two NATO allies, at a time when European nations are working to bolster support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. The visit will include a joint flypast over Rome by the Italian Air Force aerobatic team, Frecce Tricolori, or Tricolor Arrows, and their Royal Air Force counterparts, the Red Arrows.
The king and queen will attend a reception in Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, to mark the 80th anniversary of the region’s liberation from the Nazis by Allied forces on April 10, 1945. The royals will also celebrate the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region and meet with local farmers devastated by floods that recently hit the area.
“The visit to Italy will underscore the depth and breadth of the bilateral relationship,’’ the palace said in a statement.
One of the central events of Charles’ trip to the Vatican will be a historic first in which the king, in his capacity as supreme governor of the Church of England, will visit the Papal Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, where reconciliation and ecumenical relations between Christian faiths are celebrated. Choirs from the King’s Chapel Royal, St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle and the Sistine Chapel will perform.
English kings had a particular link to the basilica before the split from Rome during the Protestant Reformation. The church was built over a white marble sarcophagus that for some 2,000 years has been believed to be the tomb of St. Paul.
The visit is taking place during the Papal Jubilee, a year of forgiveness and reconciliation that is celebrated by the Catholic Church every 25 years.
Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/royalty
FILE - Pope Francis arrives for his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
FILE - Britain's King Charles III waves as he arrives for a visit to University College Hospital Macmillan Cancer Centre in London, Tuesday, April 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
DALLAS (AP) — President Donald Trump says files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy will be released Tuesday without any redactions, making good on a promise he made during his campaign.
Trump told reporters Monday that his administration will be releasing 80,000 files, though it’s not clear how many of those are among the millions of pages of records that have already been made public. He did not give further details on the release.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said while at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
He also said he doesn’t believe anything will be redacted from the files. “I said, ‘Just don’t redact. You can’t redact,’” he said.
Many who have studied what's been released so far by the government say the public shouldn’t anticipate any earth-shattering revelations from the newly released documents, but there is still intense interest in details related to the assassination and the events surrounding it.
Here are some things to know:
Shortly after he was sworn into office, Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories.
He directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records. The order also aimed to declassify the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
After signing the order, Trump handed the pen to an aide and directed that it be given to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration's top health official. He's the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of Robert F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine activism has alienated him from much of his family, has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for his uncle's assassination.
When Air Force One carrying JFK and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip.
But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that didn't quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some remain unseen.
The National Archives says that the vast majority of its collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have already been released.
Researchers have estimated that 3,000 files or so haven’t been released, either in whole or in part. And last month, the FBI said that it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination. The agency said then that it was working to transfer the records to the National Archives to be included in the declassification process.
There are still some documents in the JFK collection that researchers don’t believe the president will be able to release. Around 500 documents, including tax returns, weren’t subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.
Some of the documents already released have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
One CIA memo describes how Oswald phoned the Soviet Embassy while in Mexico City to ask for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban Embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would permit him to visit Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa. On Oct. 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back into the United States through a crossing point at the Texas border.
Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet Embassy that September. The releases have also contributed to the understanding of that time period during the Cold War, researchers said.
FILE - Newly-elected President Kennedy posed for first pictures at his White House desk, Jan. 21, 1961, before plunging into a busy round of conferences. (AP Photo/Bill Achatz, File)
FILE - Part of a file, dated April 5, 1964, details efforts to trace Lee Harvey Oswald's travel from Mexico City back to the United States, is photographed in Washington, Oct. 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)
FILE - President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade approximately one minute before he was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Riding with President Kennedy are first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, right, Nellie Connally, second from left, and her husband, Texas Gov. John Connally, far left. (AP Photo/Jim Altgens, File)
FILE - Part of a file, dated Nov. 24, 1963, quoting FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as he talks about the death of Lee Harvey Oswald, is photographed in Washington, Oct. 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)
