The Pope, acting on the request of the French and English ambassadors, had delayed to pronounce a definitive sentence, but the news of Henry's marriage with Anne and of the verdict that had been promulgated by the Archbishop of Canterbury made it imperative that decisive measures should be taken. On the 11th July it was decreed that Henry's divorce from Catharine and his marriage with Anne were null and void.[27] Sentence of excommunication against him was prepared, but its publication was postponed till September, when an interview had been arranged to take place between the Pope and Francis I. Francis I. was not without hope even still that an amicable settlement could be arranged. Throughout the whole proceedings he had espoused warmly Henry's cause, in the belief that England, having broken completely with Catharine's nephew Charles V., might be forced to conclude an alliance with France; but he never wished that Henry VIII. should set the Holy See at defiance, or that England should be separated from the Catholic Church. To the Pope and to Henry he had addressed his remonstrances and petitions in turn, but events had reached such a climax that mediation was almost an impossibility. The interview arranged between the Pope and Francis I. took place at Marseilles in October 1533. Regardless of all the rules of diplomatic courtesy and of good manners, Henry's representative forced his way into the presence of the Pope, and announced to him that the King of England had appealed from the verdict of Rome to the judgment of a General Council. Notices of this appeal were posted up in London, and preachers were ordered to declaim against the authority of the Pope, who was to be styled henceforth Bishop of Rome, and whose sentences and excommunications, the people were to be informed, were of no greater importance than those of any other foreign bishop. The way was now open for the final act of separation.