LONDON (AP) — Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla are set to make a state visit to the Vatican in late October, six months after the trip was postponed due to the illness of the late Pope Francis.

While the king and queen delayed their formal state visit in April, they met privately with Francis during their four-day state visit to Italy. Francis died just two weeks after the meeting, which took place on the occasion of the royal couple’s 20th wedding anniversary.

The rescheduled visit will allow Charles and Camilla to join the new pope, Leo XIV, in celebrating the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, Buckingham Palace said in a statement. The Jubilee is a year of reconciliation and pilgrimage that the church celebrates every 25 years.

The visit to the Vatican is also symbolic of the effort 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, has made building bridges between people of all faiths a priority since he ascended the throne 2 1/2 years ago.

Earlier this month, the first Catholic funeral for a member of the Royal Family in modern times was held for the Duchess of Kent. The King and Queen attended her Requiem Mass.

On Sept. 3, King Charles toured the Oratory of St Philip Neri in Birmingham, founded by St. John Henry Newman. The King, then the Prince of Wales, had previously attended Newman’s canonization in Rome in 2019.

When Charles and Camilla met Pope Francis in April, the meeting took place at the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta and lasted 20 minutes, with Buckingham Palace saying afterwards how “deeply touched” the royal couple had been by the pope’s “kind remarks” on their wedding anniversary.