Pictorial: Charles III Crowned King of England

Charles III has officially been crowned King of England on Saturday at Westminster Abbey after a long wait as the heir.

The new king who ascended the throne on 8 September 2022, after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. was crowned in a highly symbolic religious ceremony, structured around an Anglican service of Holy Communion.

Being the first coronation to happen in 70 years, since 1953, King Charles’s Coronation becomes the second to be televised and the first in color and streamed online.

Charles and Camilla’s coronation service has been altered from past British coronations to represent multiple faiths, cultures, and communities across the United Kingdom, and is to be shorter than his mother’s coronation in 1953.

The event:

It includes Charles being anointed, receiving the coronation regalia, and being crowned, emphasizing his spiritual role and secular responsibilities.

Charles was anointed out of sight of the congregation behind a three-sided screen in front of the High Altar to the strains of Handel’s soaring anthem “Zadok the Priest”, sung at every coronation since 1727.

Rishi Sunak — Britain’s first prime minister of color, who gave a reading from the Bible at the service — has described the coronation as “a proud expression of our history, culture and traditions”.

At 12:02 pm, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby placed the solid gold St Edward’s Crown on Charles’s head as a sacred and ancient symbol of the monarch’s authority.

Cries of “God Save the King” rang out from the 2,300-strong congregation at Westminster Abbey and trumpet fanfares sounded at the climax of the solemn religious confirmation of his accession.

Outside, ceremonial gun salutes blasted out across land and sea while bells pealed in celebration at churches across the country.

While many chanted “God Save the King”, as expected some dozens of Republic activists carried banners on the route of the procession’s biggest evening “Not My King.”

But even before Charles, 74, and Queen Camilla, 75, left Buckingham Palace for a rainy procession to the abbey, police arrested dozens of protesters.

Expressing concerns, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International voiced said, “This is something you would expect to see in Moscow, not London,”.

London’s Metropolitan Police has some 11,500 officers on the streets in one of its biggest ever security operations. It has warned that it has an “extremely low threshold” for protests.

Much of the two-hour Anglican service, in which Charles pledged “I come not to be served but to serve”, would have been recognisable to the 39 other monarchs crowned at Westminster Abbey since 1066.

Women bishops participated for the first time, as did leaders of Britain’s non-Christian faiths while its Celtic languages — Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic — featured prominently.

A gospel choir sang for the first time at a coronation while a Greek choir intoned a psalm in tribute to Charles’s late father, Prince Philip, who was born on the island of Corfu.

As king, Charles is supreme governor of the Church of England and has described himself as a “committed Anglican Christian”.