Pope, Lutheran leaders to commemorate 500 years since Reformation

Pope Francis and Lutheran
church leaders would travel to
southern Sweden on Monday for
the commemoration of a five-
centuries-old event that has been
one of the most divisive in
western Christianity’s Protestant
Reformation.
A report on Friday in Vatican City
(Holy Sea) said pope would be
joined by Bishop Munib Younan,
Head of the Lutheran World
Federation (LWF), and Reverend
Martin Junge, the LWF General
Secretary, at an ecumenical
prayer service in Lund Cathedral.
It said the meeting would mark
another step forward in efforts to
overcome their historic divisions
and commemorate one of the
most divisive events in the
history of Christianity on
Monday.
“The upcoming anniversary year
gives them a chance to signal
more unity between Catholics
and Protestants,” the report
stated.
This year’s Reformation Day
commemorates 500 years since
Martin Luther’s wrote his
controversial 95 Theses, outlining
what he saw as widespread abuse
and corruption within the
Renaissance Catholic Church in
1517.
Catholic and Lutheran Churches
would use the day to launch a
year-long commemoration of the
historic anniversary.
Vatican recalled that Luther
criticised the sale of indulgences,
granting a remission of temporal
punishment due to sin to raise
money for the building of St
Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
“He also argued that the faithful
should be allowed to have a more
personal relationship with God
with less interference from the
clergy.
“His teachings triggered one of the most
significant schisms in Christianity, leading
Protestants to break away from the Catholic
Church,’’ it said.
Junge said the LWF groups 145 churches in
the Lutheran tradition, representing over 74
million Christians in 98 countries.
He said the commemoration would also mark
50 years of official ecumenical dialogue
through which Catholics and Lutherans have
sought to bridge the divide.
“It offers them an opportunity to reflect on
their divisions that resulted in conflict and
the 30 years’ War in Europe in the 17th
century.
“The dialogues have helped create trust and
contributed to removing “some of the
obstacles of doctrinal differences among us.
“The time is mature, is ripe, to move from
conflict to communion,” he said.
Cardinal Kurt Koch, who Heads the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said
the commemoration was a sign of hope but
was repentance for the religious strife that
once rocked Europe.
He said after Monday’s prayer service, the
church leaders would attend a service focused
on youth and refugees in the nearby city of
Malmo, along with leaders from the Catholic
Diocese of Stockholm and the Lutheran
Church of Sweden, including Archbishop
Antje Jackelen.
Koch said proceeds from ticket sales in Malmo
were to be used for LWF’s work with Syrian
refugees in Jordan and the Catholic relief
agency Caritas’ support for children in the
Syrian city of Aleppo.
The LWF was founded in Lund in 1947, and
the city’s cathedral consecrated in 1145, has
been used by both Catholics and Lutherans.
Pope John Paul II was the first pope to visit
predominantly Lutheran Sweden in 1989.
(dpa/NAN)