Greetings at the 12th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation
Windhoek, Namibia, 12–17 May 2017
It is my privilege to convey to you the greetings and blessings of the Catholic Church and of Pope Francis in particular. I am delighted to be present personally at the 12th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation taking place in the year of the Reformation commemoration. In this year we commemorate not only 500 years of the Reformation. but also 50 years of intensive dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics, through which we have been able to discover once more how much we have in common in the faith.
The dialogue with the Lutheran World Federation was the first that the Catholic Church commenced immediately after the Second Vatican Council, and has proved to be very fruitful. A milestone in this dialogue was certainly the signing of the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” on 31 August 1999 in Augsburg. It is a gift of grace that it has become possible to achieve a fundamental consensus in the doctrine that led to dispute and ultimately to the schism in the Church in the 16th century. On the foundation of what had been achieved, we Catholics were pleased to accept the invitation of the Lutheran World Federation to celebrate together the Reformation commemoration. How that had become possible was demonstrated by Lutherans and Catholics in the joint document “From Conflict to Communion”. That text paved the way for the joint commemoration of the Reformation that took place in the Lutheran Cathedral in Lund in Sweden on 31 October 2016, in a joint worship service presided over by Pope Francis on the Catholic side and by LWF President Bishop Munib Younan and General Secretary Reverend Martin Junge on behalf of the Lutheran side. This event has been widely understood and acknowledged as a promising ecumenical signal.
In their joint declaration Bishop Younan and Pope Francis affirmed: “While we are profoundly thankful for the spiritual and theological gifts received through the Reformation, we also confess and lament before Christ that Lutherans and Catholics have wounded the visible unity of the Church.”[1] These words give expression to the two central elements which occupy the foreground of a joint Reformation commemoration.
In the first place gratitude is to be expressed for all the positive spiritual and theological insights brought about by the Reformation and which Lutheran and Catholic Christians today confess jointly, above all with regard to the relationship of Scripture and tradition, the eucharist, ecclesial ministry and the doctrine of justification by grace. After a long history of separation it has been become possible over the past half century, through intensive dialogue, to overcome the previous divisive confessionalism and to perceive that the schism of Western Christianity following the Reformation has not been able to destroy the roots of the Christian faith.
The hands that Lutheran and Catholic Christians have extended to one another over the past decades will not be drawn back again. Not only, but these hands, also together, are joined in heartfelt prayer for forgiveness for the great guilt that has burdened Lutheran and Catholic Christians through history. For the Reformation did not lead to the renewal of the whole Church as Martin Luther intended, but to schism. With and after the schism, cruel confessional conflicts took place in the West in the 16th and 17th centuries, in which Christians fought against one another to the death, above all in the Thirty Years War which transformed Europe into a Red Sea of blood. In view of this tragic history in which the one body of Christ was wounded and Christians committed violence against one another in the name of religion, Catholic and Lutheran Christians have every reason to lament and be penitent for the misunderstandings, malicious acts and injuries they have inflicted on one another over the past 500 years.
Gratitude and the plea for reconciliation go hand in hand and form as it were the two sides of a joint Reformation commemoration as expressed in the statement “From Conflict to Communion”. For a joint Reformation commemoration must take the conflict as seriously as the communion, and above all make a contribution enabling Lutheran and Catholic Christians to progress along the path from conflict to communion.
As spiritual nourishment along this path we have been given the purification of historical memory, as Pope Francis cautions in the words: “We cannot erase what is past, nor do we wish to allow the weight of past transgressions to continue to pollute our relationships. The mercy of God will renew our relationships.”2 If mercy and reconciliation form the guiding perspectives of the ecumenical path, above all in this year of the Reformation commemoration, we can walk together through the open door to a positive future.
In gratitude for the fruitful collaboration which the Catholic Church has experienced with the Lutheran World Federation and its leadership, I wish you every success in this 12th Assembly and God’s blessings for your future undertakings. And in thanking you on behalf of the Catholic Church for the fact that we are able to celebrate a centenary of the Reformation in ecumenical communion for the first time in history, I live in hope that we can continue to walk the path into the future together, liberated by God’s grace and accompanied by the Holy Spirit who will show us the way.
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[1]. Joint Declaration on the occasion of the joint Catholic–Lutheran Reformation commemoration on 31 October 2016.
[2]. Pope Francis, Homily at the Vespers on the Solemnity of the conversion of the Apostle Paul, in the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, 25 January 2016.