King Charles III and Queen Camilla headed to the Vatican for a long-awaited state visit this week, and they brought along a remarkable heirloom diamond brooch that may have more than a century of history with the royal family.
On Thursday, King Charles III and Queen Camilla headed to the Holy See for a brief state visit with Pope Leo XIV. The visit was timed to celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year of the Catholic Church, and it had originally been scheduled to take place in April during Charles and Camilla’s state visit to Italy.
That formal April visit was postponed because of the declining health of Pope Francis, who passed away shortly afterward. Charles and Camilla did get to have a brief audience with Francis during the Italian visit, with Camilla wearing the late Queen’s Greville Ivy Leaf Clips on her black dress.
During Thursday’s visit, the royal couple held their first meeting with the newly-elected Pope Leo XIV and exchanged gifts. Charles described the presentation as a “small token of esteem and appreciation.” The items exchanged included signed photographs and artwork. The King offered the Pope an icon of St. Edward the Confessor, while the Pope presented a version of the mosaic of Christ Pantocrator to the royal couple.
Orders were exchanged, too. The King made the Pope an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, while Charles and Camilla received the Order of Pope Pius IX (with the collar for Charles). Camilla can be seen wearing the ribbon of the order in some of the photographs from the visit.
Before the visit concluded, the heads of the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches participated in something unusual: an ecumenical prayer service in the Sistine Chapel. During the service, they became the first pope and British monarch to pray together at a church service since the Reformation.
The BBC noted ahead of the visit, “The service in the Sistine Chapel will be focused on protecting nature, in recognition of the King’s enthusiastic support of environmental causes. But its purpose will be to show harmony between the two religious denominations, with the Sistine Chapel Choir singing alongside the Choir of St George’s Chapel and the Choir of His Majesty’s Chapel Royal.”
For the state visit, Queen Camilla wore a traditional black dress with a headpiece and veil. The dress code for women visiting the Vatican has evolved over the years. (Earlier this year at Hidden Gems, I wrote a piece on the different ensembles worn by the late Queen Elizabeth II during her many meetings with various popes.)
With the ensemble, Queen Camilla wore her favorite diamond and pearl drop earrings, plus her four-row pearl choker with the round diamond clasp, as well as a necklace with a gold pendant engraved with the initials of her grandchildren.
The brooch she wore for the papal visit, shown here on a previous occasion, is called the “Raspberry Pip Brooch” by Buckingham Palace. The jewel is in the shape of an embellished cross, and it is set with both white and yellow diamonds.
The palace has briefed that the brooch belonged to the late Queen Elizabeth II, but many (including me) believe that it has at least two more centuries of history with the family. The Countess of Strathmore, mother of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, had a very similar (and perhaps identical) diamond cross brooch in her own jewelry collection. She wears the jewel in this photograph with her granddaughter, the infant Elizabeth II, taken in 1927.
When Lady Strathmore died in 1938, she left her “yellow diamond cross” to her youngest daughter, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It would make sense that the jewel stayed with the Queen Mum for the decades that followed until it would have been inherited by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.
We saw Queen Camilla make her public debut in the cross brooch on Christmas Day at Sandringham in December 2023, a little over a year after her husband inherited the throne.
She has worn the brooch on several occasions since then. In May of this year, she chose it for a visit to the newly reopened Sainsbury Wing at the National Gallery, where she and Charles unveiled their state portraits.
We also saw her wear it on the fourth day of the races at Royal Ascot this year, pairing it with a white ensemble and her diamond coronation earrings.
Now, the brooch joins the select group of British royal jewels that have made appearances at the Vatican. The cross nods to the important religious symbolism of the visit while still packing enough diamond sparkle to make it elevated enough for a state occasion.
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