At the Apostolic Nunciature in Madrid, during the Queen Sofia Pope audience that took place on Monday, the 87-year-old queen extended her hand to Pope Leo XIV with a small, deliberate act of remembrance on her wrist: a bracelet engraved with EIPHNH, Princess Irene’s name in Greek capital letters. It was, in its quietness, as moving a tribute as any formal ceremony.
Princess Irene died on 15 January at the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid, at the age of 83. According to Wikipedia, she had been born on 11 May 1942 in Cape Town, and in the decades that followed she would build a life defined not by royal ceremony but by a deep and restless commitment to others. Her passing left a gap in the Greek and Spanish royal households that Queen Sofia has quietly been navigating ever since.
A private audience, a public memory
The meeting with the Pope was a family occasion. Queen Sofia was joined by her daughters, Infanta Elena and Infanta Cristina, and by three of her grandchildren: Victoria Frederic, Pablo Urdangarin, and Miguel Urdangarin. The Pontiff is in Spain on an official visit, receiving guests at the Apostolic Nunciature, and the audience was private in character, even if the details have since become widely known.
The bracelet was not the only detail that drew attention. Queen Sofia bears le privilège du blanc, the privilege of white, which permits the monarchs and consorts of Catholic nations to wear white rather than the black conventionally required when meeting the Pope. In a departure from precedent, she wore a white trouser suit by Alejandro de Miguel, becoming the first queen to exercise the privilege in trousers. The right extends to former monarchs and consorts, which is why Sofia retains it. The first recorded use of the exception was reportedly by Victoria Eugenia of Spain during a private conversation with Pope Pius XI in 1923.
The privilege is also held by Queen Sofia’s daughter-in-law, Queen Letizia, who used it during a mass at the Sagrada Familia on Wednesday, by the Queen of Belgium, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, the Princess of Monaco, and the princesses of the House of Savoy. The privilege does not oblige its holders to wear white, as the varied choices of Princess Charlene across her papal meetings illustrate: white in 2013, white again in 2016, black in 2022.
The legacy of Princess Irene and the Queen Sofia Pope audience tribute
That Queen Sofia chose to carry her sister’s name into the Queen Sofia Pope audience is entirely in keeping with Princess Irene’s own spiritual character. Irene was known as a woman of deep faith, and the chance to meet a newly elected Pope would, by all accounts, have meant a great deal to her.
In 1986, according to Vanity Fair, Irene founded the humanitarian organisation World in Harmony / Mundo en Armonía, which for four decades sought practical ways to express solidarity with those in need and compassion for animals. It was the institutional expression of a philosophy she had held all her life. Music, she said, was “one of the faces of God.” The purpose of her work, she explained in her own words, was not to save the world but to offer it “a little relief, a little hope, a little harmony where there is suffering.”
The Greek royal household’s tribute following her death described her as “quiet, unconventional, and interesting, with a spiritual and humorous side,” adding that her charitable work had earned her the title she cherished most: “Irene, the princess of the poor.”
After private services at the Zarzuela Palace, her body was transferred to the Cathedral of St Andrew and St Demetrius in Madrid, where a memorial service was held on 17 January 2026. She was buried two days later, on 19 January 2026, at the Royal Cemetery at Tatoi Palace in Greece, laid to rest among her family in the country of her birth. Casa Real, the Spanish royal household, has continued to mark her passing in the weeks since. The engraved bracelet at Monday’s papal audience is the latest, and perhaps most personal, expression of that grief.