Queen Letizia Wears Pearls—and Exercises the Privilege du Blanc—for a Meeting with Pope Leo XVI

On Friday, the King and Queen of Spain headed to Rome, where Letizia wore classic pearls for a visit with the Pope and a special ceremony at a papal basilica.

King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain headed to the Vatican on Friday for an audience with Pope Leo XVI. This meeting is a precursor to the Pope’s upcoming visit to Madrid, Barcelona, and the Canary Islands in June.

After a meeting in the Pope’s private library, they joined the full delegation for the official exchange of gifts and an official photograph. The King and Queen gave the Pope a facsimile of a sixteenth-century Book of Hours that belonged to King Felipe II of Spain and a merino wool lap blanket.

After their stop at the Vatican, King Felipe and Queen Letizia traveled across Rome to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where Felipe was installed as the basilica’s Protocanon. It’s a role that is steeped in the long shared history of the basilica and the Spanish monarchy.

The basilica’s Liberian Chapter is a body of clergy who carry out the church’s liturgical and pastoral functions. The chapter is led by the Cardinal-Archpriest, Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, who is pictured beside King Felipe in the photograph above. Cardinal Makrickas is assisted by a vicar and twelve canons, with the Spanish monarch as protocanon. The honorary hereditary title dates to the seventeenth century. A Bernini statue of one of the early Spanish protocanons, King Felipe IV, stands in the basilica to this day.

For the papal visit and the installation ceremony, Queen Letizia emphasized her role as the wife of a Catholic monarch by exercising the privilège du blanc—the right to wear white instead of black in the presence of the Pope. The privilege has been extended to the Queens of Belgium and Spain, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, and the Princess of Monaco, as well as the women of the House of Savoy, Italy’s former royal family.

Queen Letizia wore a white tweed dress with long sleeves and a tea-length skirt for the occasion. It’s similar to the green tweed dress she’s sported for various events recently, including a lunch with the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. I don’t believe the designer of the green or white dresses has been identified, but I’d guess that they come from the same source.

With the dress, Letizia wore a pair of diamond and pearl drop earrings from Ansorena. These have been in her jewelry box for many years. She wore them for the christenings of both of her daughters, and she’s chosen them often for visits to the Vatican.

As usual, Letizia’s only other accessory for the audience and the installation service was her Coreterno ring. Fittingly, the ring features text from Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is widely accepted to be the greatest piece of Italian-language literature.

Over the past two decades, Felipe and Letizia have had many official meetings with various Popes. Shortly after their royal wedding in 2004, they had an audience with Pope John Paul II. For that occasion, the couple dressed formally, with Felipe in white tie and Letizia in a long black dress and lace mantilla.

Here, the couple wears business attire when greeting Pope Benedict XVI at the airport in Santiago de Compostela. Letizia wore a gray ensemble with small earrings for the meeting.

Everything was less formal during Pope Francis’s tenure. Here, Felipe and Letizia meet with Francis at the Vatican a few days after his accession to the throne. Letizia exercised the privilège du blanc for the first time during this audience, wearing an embroidered white jacket and dress with her Ansorena pearl drop earrings.

We most recently saw Letizia wearing white at the Vatican last May, when she wore a white dress, a white lace veil, and the Ansorena pearl drop earrings for Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration mass. It was during this event that Felipe extended the invitation for Leo to come to Spain. It will be the first papal visit to Spain in fifteen years.

Before I go today, a reminder that my free Wednesday Hidden Gems newsletter will arrive in subscribers’ inboxes later this morning. There’s much to discuss, including a fascinating diamond that will be sold next month in Hong Kong. See you there!