Successful actress and humanitarian Meghan Markle joined the British Royal family in 2018, marrying Prince Harry. The family’s tradition sees them put their faith in the Church of England, but where did Markle sit with this?
Meghan Markle is not Catholic. She was raised as a Protestant Christian in the United States, a fact which remained when she joined the British Royal family, marrying Prince Harry in 2018. At that point however, she was baptized and confirmed into the Church of England.
Read on to find out more about Meghan Markle’s religious history.
Where It All Began
Meghan Markle was born to a loving, mixed family in Los Angeles, California, and had a nourishing, advantageous upbringing. Her parents followed a protestant christian faith, something which was passed down to Markle from a young age.
Her mother especially encouraged her to understand the importance of philanthropy and giving back to the local community.
Christianity was the leading faith in California as of 2020, with 63% of the state conforming to some form of Christian worship; protestant christianity made up approximately half of that number alone.
The parental influence combined with this particular religion having local dominance likely shaped Markle’s earliest impressions of religion, leading her down the path of the faith she follows today.
Strangely, Meghan Markle attended a catholic all-girls school when she was young, the Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles. While studying here, she actually continued to conform to her Christian faith, despite many of her peers adhering to Catholicism.
However, many years after her graduation, the school still celebrated her as one of their most successful alums, and posted a video to YouTube in celebration of Markle’s marriage to Prince Harry.
You can see this video on YouTube.
In another instance, Markle gave a virtual graduation speech to her Alma Mater in June of 2020, amidst a time of great struggle and trepidation. The United States was in the throes of COVID-19 and was experiencing great unrest in the wake of the George Floyd incident.
The One Who Could Not Be Queen
It may be considered lucky that Meghan Markle wasn’t raised as a catholic, as this would have undoubtedly caused issues in later life when she would eventually come to marry Prince Harry.
While marrying into the British Royal Family doesn’t guarantee any kind of succession rights, it is (and has been for hundreds of years) forbidden for a person of Catholic faith to take the throne.
Therefore, while Harry is fifth in line for the throne, he wouldn’t ever sit on it if he was catholic. This is the same for Meghan – if a situation did of course exist where that was a possibility in any way.
The particular legal Act that prohibited the king or queen from practicing catholicism was amended in 2013 but this only permitted the premier on the throne to marry a catholic person, and not to follow the faith themselves.
There was some confusion among Royal fans before the wedding in 2018, as Meghan Markle took the choice to be baptized and confirmed into the Church of England, despite having been christian her whole life.
This is strange on two fronts: one, she was christian her whole life and not baptized already, and two, she didn’t need to be baptized to be welcomed into the Church of England.
Faith, Humanity And Grace
Regardless of her chosen faith, Meghan Markle has sparkled in recent years, owing to her lifelong philanthropic actions, her outspoken attitude towards rights for women and people of color, and her activism for animal rights. She’s a kindhearted person through and through, and worthy of a place in the British Royal family.