Prince Harry's childhood priest urges him to forgive and ‘stop being a victim'

News24

14-05-2025

A priest who once gave sermons at Eton College to a teenage Prince Harry has spoken out, saying the royal needs to 'shed the role of victimhood'.
Angela Tilby (75) says the royal needs to 'forgive' in order to overcome his 'grief and confusion' and find freedom.
In a piece for the Church Times called A Sermon that Prince Harry Should Heed, the canon shared her thoughts on the royal, who is estranged from his family due to his many public attacks on the monarchy.
'I grieve for that ginger-topped teenager I once preached to,' wrote Tilby, who is also a broadcaster and columnist. 'I believe he is a decent man. But, so far, he has found no way to switch off the trauma in his head.'
Tilby, who attended Princess Diana's funeral in 1996, claims Harry's decision to blame an 'establishment stitch-up' for his recent court defeat to have private security in the UK is childish.
'The repeated demand for police protection and the insistence that his father [King Charles] could simply sort this out by ordering it sounds as though it comes from the 12-year-old who was required to walk behind his mother's coffin.
What he might have picked up from attending morning service in Eton chapel was that forgiveness involves not only making peace with the offender but, eventually and at great cost, giving up the role of victimhood.
Angela Tilby
When he was a working royal, Harry had automatic taxpayer-funded security but when he and his wife, Meghan Markle, exited The Firm in 2020, it was removed.
Tilby questions Harry's recent claims that he's forgiven Charles and the rest of his family over Megxit.
'He has said too much for relationships to heal. He claims to have forgiven his father and the royal family, but it is clearly a qualified forgiveness.'
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In his recent explosive interview with the BBC, Harry claimed Charles isn't speaking to him and that he doesn't 'know how much longer my father has'.
Some royal experts believe he went too far in his comments about Charles' health.
'I suspect that Harry said more than he had perhaps intended because he was consumed with anger that the court decision had gone against him,' former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond told The Mirror.
'When the court ruling didn't go his way, he was, in his own words 'gutted and devastated'. And he was clearly seething with fury. And that is rarely the best time to air your thoughts.'
Simon Lewis, a former communications secretary to the late Queen Elizabeth, believes the timing was bad.
'The central tenet of PR is often timing – when you choose to do things, and secondly how you choose to do them.'
He believes the duke should have waited before speaking. 'Perhaps he should have delivered some of his messages so much more elegantly.
'A less accusatory approach might have resulted in more sympathy.'