Royal Wedding 2018: How Bishop Michael Curry stole the show with his sermon based on love

The focus of Britain's royal wedding — where Suits actress Meghan Markle married Prince Harry — was supposed to be on the bride and groom (and their many celebrity attendees) of course.

What few expected, however, was for the ceremony's highlight to be a sermon delivered by the preacher Michael Curry.

After an animated speech that touched on the theme of love, Michael B Curry — the 27th and current presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church (and the first African-American presiding bishop when elected in 2015) — earned himself a new legion of fans.

Case in point:

When Harry and Meghan announced that the American Bishop Curry would be delivering the sermon at their wedding, it caused a bit of a stir: it is a task usually conferred on senior members of the Church of England.

“The love that has brought and will bind Prince Harry and Meghan Markle together has its source and origin in God, and is the key to life and happiness,” Curry had said in a statement. “And so we celebrate and pray for them today.”

Curry had also hinted — even before Saturday's ceremony in St. George's Chapel — that he would be bringing his inimitable style to the sermon.

"I'll never forget my daddy told me when I was fairly new as a priest, he said just always be who you really are. Don't pretend to be someone else," Curry had said.

The BBC picked a selection of quotes from Bishop Curry's sermon:

"When love is the way, we will let justice roll down like a mighty stream and righteousness like an ever-flowing brook. When love is the way, poverty will become history. When love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary. When love is the way, we will lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside to study war no more. When love is the way, there's plenty good room, plenty good room for all of god's children. Because when love is the way, we actually treat each other, well, like we're actually family."

He ended his sermon with words by the reverend Martin Luther King Jr:

“We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world.”

Bishop Curry was ordained as a priest in 1978. In 2015, he garnered support (and some criticism) for defending the Episcopal Church's decision to allow same-sex couples to marry in church.

Read our coverage of the royal wedding as it happened: Meghan Markle marries Prince Harry in elegant ceremony at Windsor Castle