King Charles attends Royal Maundy service in Wales

Hundreds of individuals gathered at St Asaph Cathedral on Thursday for the annual Royal Maundy service, held in Wales for less than the second time within the service’s 800-year history.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla attended the ceremony, where 77 men and 77 women were honoured with Maundy gifts in recognition of longstanding Christian service to their communities. Most recipients were from Wales, with others drawn from dioceses across the United Kingdom..

The Royal Maundy tradition dates back to at the very least the thirteenth century, when King John is recorded as distributing alms in 1210. The variety of recipients has since been linked to the age of the reigning monarch.

During the ceremony, recipients were presented with Maundy Money, a standard royal gift distributed annually on Maundy Thursday.

Each recipient received two purses – a white purse containing specially minted silver coins totalling 77 pence, reflecting the King’s age, and a red purse containing a £5 coin commemorating the centenary of Queen Elizabeth II’s birth, together with a 50 pence piece marking the fiftieth anniversary of The King’s Trust.

The service featured music by Welsh composers and features the Cross of Wales, a ceremonial cross gifted by the King to the Christians of Wales and which led the procession on the King’s coronation in 2023. It was gifted to the monarch by the late Pope Francis and accommodates a fraction said to be from the True Cross on which Christ was crucified.

The Dean of St Asaph, the Very Rev Nigel Williams, said it had been “a delight” to host the royal couple.

“We hope that the recipients of those honours will cherish at the present time for years to return,” he said.