‘God of love, we raise to you our Queen Consort”: for anyone who has longed to mention Camilla Parker Bowles to the most high but struggled to find the words, the Church of England is here, with a set of new prayers, to help. Will they work? Given the impressive pace of her ascent from dedicated fox-chaser to – after years of regular Anglican invocations – near deity, it seems almost blasphemous to ask.
In 1996 more than half of England’s bishops thought Camilla and Charles should never marry. When, in 2005, they did, in a register office, 73% of those polled were opposed to her becoming queen. Although the late queen then denied Camilla the bespoke name checks in Anglican worship enjoyed (until their withdrawal in 1996) by Charles’s first wife, she did enjoy inclusion in regular state prayers for “all the royal family”, followed by her 2022 orison upgrade, one that can still shock unwary congregants out of a spiritual reverie: “Almighty God, the fountain of all goodness, we humbly beseech thee to bless Camilla the Queen Consort.”
