Royal family to attend funeral of Duchess of Kent in Windsor
The Duchess of Kent will be laid to rest in Windsor after a Catholic funeral service at Westminster Cathedral, Buckingham Palace has announced.
The funeral will take place on Tuesday, Sept 16 at 2pm.
It will be the first Catholic funeral service held for a member of the Royal family in modern British history, and the first at Westminster Cathedral since its construction in 1903.
The King, who is head of the Church of England, will join the Duke of Kent at the Requiem Mass alongside the Queen and other members of the Royal family.
The Duchess, who at 92 was the oldest member of the Royal family, died peacefully on Thursday night at her Kensington Palace home with her close family by her side.
In 1994, she became the first member of the Royal family to publicly convert to Catholicism in more than 300 years. She described it at the time as “a long-pondered personal decision”.
The Duchess was received into the Catholic Church by the then Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume.
She went on to volunteer for the Passage homelessness charity, which Cardinal Hume had helped set up, and of which the Prince of Wales is now patron.
Buckingham Palace announced the Duchess’s death on Friday as the Royal family joined the Duke of Kent, his children and grandchildren in mourning. Union flags were lowered to half-mast at royal residences.
The Duchess’s coffin is now resting in the private chapel at Kensington Palace. It will be taken by hearse to Westminster Cathedral on the eve of the funeral for the Rite of Reception and Vespers, to be attended by the Duchess’s immediate family. It will then rest overnight in the Lady Chapel.
After the Requiem Mass, led by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, the coffin will be taken by hearse to the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore, Windsor, accompanied by the Dean of Windsor.
Among the funeral guests will be representatives from the Duchess’s charities and regimental affiliations. Her special military relationships will be reflected in the ceremony.
The Duchess was controller commandant of the Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC), with the rank of Major-General. She visited units of the WRAC serving with the British Army of the Rhine in 1969 and tried her hand at driving a Chieftain tank.
The funeral will take place on the eve of Donald Trump’s unprecedented second state visit to the UK. Royal sources said the visit would continue as planned, with preparations in Windsor managed accordingly.
Once known to the press as “Caring Kate”, the Duchess was loved for her empathetic approach to royal duty and her openness about her physical and mental health in an era when it was still largely taboo.
She was best known to the public for her sympathetic hug of tennis player Jana Novotna after her defeat at Wimbledon in 1993, seen as groundbreaking for its relatability and common touch at the time.
The Duchess eschewed the titles and trappings of royal life. She preferred to be known as Mrs Kent and dropped her HRH style to spend more than a decade secretly teaching music at a state primary school in Hull, to which she commuted by train each week.
In 2004, she co-founded Future Talent, a charity that helps children from low-income backgrounds to develop their musical abilities.
Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday: “For many years, she was one of our hardest-working royals – supporting our late Queen Elizabeth II in her official duties at home and abroad.
“She brought compassion, dignity and a human touch to everything she did. Many will remember that moment at the Wimbledon Ladies Final, when she touchingly comforted the runner-up, Jana Novotna.
“Later, when it was discovered she had been giving her time and working anonymously as a music teacher at a school in Hull, it seemed typical of her unassuming nature.”
Politics Editor
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