A private letter from 1998 has come to light revealing that King Charles, then Prince of Wales, regarded Orthodoxy as the sole Christian denomination unaffected by what he termed “loathsome political correctness.”
This perspective, voiced long before he ascended to the throne and became the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, could be interpreted as a veiled criticism of the institution he would later lead.
The letter, marked as “private and confidential,” was written from Balmoral Castle and addressed to Dudley Poplack, an interior designer who had worked closely with the royal family. Following Poplack’s death in 2005, the letter was sold at auction by Lay’s Auctioneers in Penzance, Cornwall, where it fetched over £1,700 (roughly the equivalent of $2,200 today), as reported by The Times.
King Charles has long shown admiration for the Greek Orthodox Church, the faith into which his father, Prince Philip, was baptised. This was reinforced by his description of the traditions of the Orthodox Church as “great [and] timeless.”
