International Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity

2 Feb – 8 Feb 2026
Invitation Only

Launch of sixth phase of dialogue

Members of the International Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity inaugurate their sixth phase of dialogue after a lengthy preparation period.

The gathering will be hosted by the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovenia and will be focusing, in its first stage, on drafting a joint statement to mark the 500th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 2030.

The document, originally designed to reconcile differences within the 16th century church, has important implications for both Lutherans and Catholics today.



Cardinal Kurt Koch led a delegation from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity to the LWF Communion Office in Geneva on 14 January for a joint staff meeting with the two dialogue partners. Photo: LWF/A. Danielsson

Time:
2 Feb – 8 Feb 2026
All day
Location:Moravske Toplice, Slovenia

Languages:English, Deutsch

Contact
Rev. Dr Dirk Lange
Assistant General Secretary for Ecumenical Relations
Contact by email

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Adventists and Lutherans share combined Easter service

By Daniel Kuberek - May 3, 2019

Conference president Pastor David Butcher (left) with Pastor David Gogoll. 

Seventh-day Adventist campers in South Australia were joined by hundreds of Lutheran worshippers from the Barossa Valley region for a combined Good Friday Easter service on April 18.

The South Australian Conference’s Big Camp meetings are held at Faith Lutheran College in Tanunda, traditionally during the first week of the April school holidays.

“That created something of a problem,” said Pastor Garry Hodgkin, one of the organisers of the program. “The Barossa Lutherans normally utilise this facility for a combined Easter service.”

“Because of that clash, they actually approached us and said, ‘Look, would you be prepared to do a combined worship event on Good Friday?’ We thought about it, we prayed about it, and thought it would be a worthwhile project.”

The program featured musical items from Seventh-day Adventist musical group One Accord, as well as praise time, led by Gilson College chaplain Pastor Mau Tuaoi. Heather Slade from the Lutheran group shared a children’s story, before ministers from both the Lutheran and Seventh-day Adventist Church presented short sermonettes on the significance of Easter.

Lutheran senior Pastor David Gogoll presented on the practical outcomes of the cross. “There are all sorts of theories, we call them the theories of atonement, about what actually happened on the cross. But at the heart of what happened on the cross was that God wants a relationship with you. That God loves you,” he told the capacity crowd.

A presentation by South Australian Conference president Pastor David Butcher followed, speaking on the practical meaning of resurrection. “God’s love is all encompassing,” he preached. “But we live in a world of pain and the resurrection, the return of Jesus provides the only hope.”




Reflecting on combined worship, Pastor Hodgkin said, “This event was not planned as an ecumenical gathering, but rather as a wonderful opportunity to express friendship and provide witness to other Christian people.”

“The thing that I particularly appreciate about this service is that we’ve got other individuals coming along to our Big Camp who are not Seventh-day Adventist. In this particular gathering today, we had about 400 Lutherans. We had about 350 Adventists. So often at our Big Camps, it’s a matter of us talking to ourselves.”

Pastor Butcher echoed these sentiments. “One of the things we want to look at is how to better connect with the local community when we do run camp.”

The event was also live streamed by local production ministry, Living Ministry Media.


Source

What is a Protestant?

WORLD

AFP | Saturday, Oct 29, 2016




Photo: Pixabay



Protestants form a branch of the Christian faith that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation 500 years ago.

Pope Francis has nonetheless strengthened ties with several Protestant denominations, and his trip to Sweden to take part in events marking the anniversary of the Reformation could mark a new high in relations.

Here are some key points about Protestantism:


This is the date that marks the beginning of the Reformation, when German theologian Martin Luther published his "95 Theses".

These notably criticised how the Catholic concept of "indulgences" - whereby a repentant sinner could reduce the punishment for his sins in purgatory in return for a monetary contribution - had been corrupted into a lucrative cash-for-salvation scheme.

Luther was excommunicated - expelled from the Roman Catholic Church - on January 3, 1521. But his message spread quickly across Europe, disseminated by the printing press.

There are several theological differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics, including the following: - Protestants believe the Bible alone is the highest authority in matters of faith. Catholics acknowledge the combined authority of the Bible along with the traditions of the Church.

- For Protestants, salvation is through faith alone, while Catholic doctrine says "good works" can influence one's standing with God.

- There are also doctrinal differences over the bread and wine used in the eucharist or holy communion. For the Catholic Church, the bread and wine mystically transform into the actual body and blood of Jesus, while for Protestants, they remain a symbol of his sacrificial death on the cross.

The Protestant movement diversified into three main branches: Lutheranism, Calvinism - which includes the Reformed Church and Presbyterianism - and Anglicanism.

The Church of Sweden, which will host the pope, is Lutheran and adheres closely to principles established by Luther.

Other sizeable Lutheran congregations are located in neighbouring Scandinavian countries, as well as in Germany, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Tanzania and the United States.

Calvinists are inspired by French theologian John Calvin, who in 1536 founded the Reformed Church in Geneva. This is present primarily in Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia.

The Anglican Communion can be found on almost all continents, and adherents observe rites common to both the Catholic and Reformed denominations.

The Catholic Church reserves the priesthood for men, who must remain celibate; within Protestantism, clerics can marry and have children, and in many churches, women have been admitted to the priesthood and hierarchy.

In addition to its major branches, the Protestant church comprises many denominations that number tens of millions of members. They include Baptists, Evangelicals, Methodists and a group of more than a half-dozen churches based in Africa.

Other common denominations include Congregationalists, Seventh Day Adventists, Quakers, Unitarians and Mennonites such as the US-based Amish people that renounce modern technology.

Non-denominational, evangelical and charismatic or pentecostal churches are currently among those growing the fastest.

The precise number of Protestants is difficult to establish given the number of churches and offshoots.

The independent Pew Research Center has estimated that in 2011, Protestants numbered more than 800 million, "broadly defined to include Anglicans as well as members of independent and non-denominational churches."

Source

Pope takes Christian unity bid to Protestant heartland of Sweden

October 31, 2016






Pope Francis was is greeted by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Loefven at Malmo airport on October 31, 2016 (AFP Photo/Vincenzo Pinto )

Malmö (Sweden) (AFP) - Pope Francis arrived in Sweden Monday on a historic mission to promote reconciliation and unity between Catholics and Protestants, riven by Christianity's nearly 500-year-old schism.

"It is an important trip," the pontiff told journalists on a plane carrying him from Rome to Sweden, a predominantly Lutheran nation hosting commemorations to mark the birth of Protestantism.

After arriving in the southern city of Malmo, Francis was to head to nearby Lund for an oecumenical service marking the start of a year of celebrations for the Reformation -- the dramatic 1517 event that created a Protestant branch of Christianity which rebelled against papal rule.

The event will also mark 50 years of reconciliatory dialogue between the Catholic Church and Lutheranism -- a Protestant branch that has traditionally been among the most fervent opponents to Vatican's authority and teachings.

Just by agreeing to attend, Francis has made a gesture that would have been unimaginable for all but his most recent predecessors, commentators say.

The popes of the 16th century spent huge amounts of time and energy trying to stifle or reverse the reforming wave launched by the German monk Martin Luther when he nailed his demands -- the "95 theses" -- to the door of a church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.

Monday's meeting comes eight months after Francis became the first pope in almost 1,000 years to meet an Orthodox Patriarch.

The current leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics has also reached out to Anglicans.

Ahead of the visit, Francis reiterated the importance he attaches to Christian unity at a time when both believers and belief itself are under pressure in many parts of the world.

"When Christians are persecuted and murdered, they are chosen because they are Christians, not because they are Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Catholics or Orthodox," Francis said in an interview with two Jesuit publications.

"An oecumenism of blood exists."

Some Catholic conservatives question whether there is anything about the Reformation worth celebrating.

Partly for that reason, every word of the sermon the ever unpredictable Francis delivers in Lund is likely to be closely scrutinised, as will remarks by Mounib Younan, the Palestinian president of the World Lutheran Federation.

The pontiff's body language will also be closely watched, particularly when he is led into the Lund cathedral by Antje Jackelen, the female archbishop who is the senior cleric in the Swedish Lutheran church.

"It is clear that in order to recognise priests within another church, this is not an advantage because it is not possible for us to have women priests," Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Monday.

"We accept of course the decision about having a woman archbishop. But it is an obstacle in the way of recognising the other church's tradition," Koch said.

Antje acknowledged, without touching on the issue of women's role in the church, that it has been complicated to organise the event in Sweden.

"It has not always been easy, partially because it is a completely unique experience and partially because there are so many chefs involved," Jackelen told Dagens Nyheter.

With its approval of women holding office, backing for gay marriage and openly lesbian and gay bishops, the Swedish church is liberal to an extent unimaginable for the vast majority of Catholic clerics.

The two traditions also differ in their approach to church governance -- hierarchical for Catholicism, flat for the Lutherans -- as well as on more esoteric theological questions.

- Shared communion? -

But they also share many religious customs, such as baptism, and Younan told AFP he would like to see Catholics and Lutherans authorised to take communion together -- something currently ruled out by Vatican doctrine.

"We are praying that one day we may celebrate the holy communion together, this is very important for me," Younan said, while stressing the importance of accentuating common ground.

"In this time when extremism is devouring all the world globally, we are giving an example to the whole world that this a common commemoration despite our disagreement in the past, a sign of unity and a sign that religion is no more a problem."

Monday's programme also includes an event in a stadium in Malmo that will be addressed by the bishop of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo. It will conclude with a mass prayer for peace in the war-torn country.

The charity wings of the two churches are also due to seal a cooperation accord.

Source

Pope Francis Reaches Out To Honor The Man Who Splintered Christianity

Audio will be available later today.

October 28, 20164:29 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

SYLVIA POGGIOLI

Pope Francis speaks to Lutheran pilgrims at the Vatican on Oct. 13. The pope is traveling to Lund, Sweden — where the Lutheran World Federation was founded 70 years ago — on Monday to take part in the year-long commemoration of the Protestant Reformation, launched by Martin Luther in 1517.AP



One of the greatest rifts in Christianity — between Catholics and Lutherans — isn't what it used to be. As a sign of those much improved relations, Pope Francis is traveling Monday to Sweden, an overwhelmingly Lutheran country, to kick off a year-long commemoration of the Protestant Reformation that split the churches 500 years ago.

It was the year 1517 when the German monk Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to the door of his Catholic church, denouncing the Catholic sale of indulgences — pardons for sins — and questioning papal authority. That led to his excommunication and the start of the Protestant Reformation.

The Catholic Church reacted with the Counter Reformation, and mutual enmity led to decades of religious wars that devastated central Europe.

Gerard O'Connell, Vatican correspondent for the Jesuit magazine America, says the pope's participation in commemorating the Reformation is proof of the extraordinary change in Catholic-Lutheran relations.

"A recognition, perhaps, that both sides missed something at the time of the Protestant Reformation," says O'Connell. "The Catholic Church missed ways of reforming itself. Luther and those around him pressed in a way that just couldn't be taken on board, so, in a way, both sides misspoke."

The pope's trip is in keeping with his efforts to reach out to other branches of Christianity — like the Russian Orthodox Church — and other faiths, including Islam and Judaism.

A reconciliation

The animosity and resentments left by the Reformation only began to heal after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, with the start of an ecumenical dialogue aimed at promoting Christian unity.

There are still some doctrinal disputes. But Pope Francis says that while theologians iron out their differences, the two churches can work together on social issues like caring for the poor, migrants and refugees, and combating persecution of Christians.

Jens-Martin Kruse, pastor of the Lutheran Church in Rome, says Francis' approach has been dubbed "walking ecumenism."

"We are moving together, this is a new experience that we are together on this walk," Kruse adds. "Walking together, we find that we have lots of things more in [common than] we thought before."

That raises the question of whether the Reformation might have been a complete misunderstanding.

"Maybe not a misunderstanding," says Kruse, "but today, we are at the point where a lot of these topics from Luther are common for Catholics and Lutherans."

Praising Martin Luther

Last June, Pope Francis went so far as to praise Luther — once deemed a heretic by the Catholic Church — as a great reformer.

On his flight back to Rome from Armenia, the pope told reporters, "The church was not a role model, there was corruption, there was worldliness, there was greed, and lust for power. He protested against this. And he was an intelligent man."

There are three remaining areas of division: the question of the Universal Church and papal primacy; the priesthood, which includes women in the Lutheran church; and the nature of the Eucharist or Holy Communion.

This last item is of great concern to both churches, as they try to deal with Catholics and Lutherans who are married and who want to receive communion together.

A year ago, visiting the Lutheran church in Rome, Pope Francis opened the door slightly. He suggested to a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic man that perhaps, if her conscience permitted, she could receive communion in her husband's church.

Briefing reporters at the Vatican, Rev. Martin Junge, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, said the question of sharing the Eucharistic table — or interfaith communion — is of prime importance.

"I really hope the joint commemoration gives us a strong encouragement to be faster, to be bolder and to be more creative," said Junge, "and with a very strong focus on where people feel lack of unity the heaviest, around the table."

Source

A leap across the great divide

by Mgr Mark Langham

posted Thursday, 27 Oct 2016

Pope Francis prays during a visit to the Lutheran church in Rome last November (AP)




Thanks to astonishing ecumenical advances, Catholics can recognise – and even give thanks for – the witness of Martin Luther

In October 2012, the Catholic bishops of Germany received an invitation that left them stumped. German Protestants had asked them to join in the jubilee celebrations of the Reformation in 2017, specifically in the events leading up to the 500th anniversary of Luther’s posting of 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenburg, the act considered to have launched the Reformation.

Not surprisingly, the bishops were cautious. “It depends on the character of the events planned,” said their spokesman, Bishop Gerhard Feige. “Catholic Christians consider the division of the Western Church as a tragedy – and do not think they can celebrate this merrily.”

Clearly, a great deal of discussion about the character of those events has taken place in the meantime. Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the president of the German bishops’ conference, and Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chairman of the German Protestant churches, have marked the anniversary by leading an ecumenical pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and will hold a Lent service dedicated to healing memories. Moreover, Pope Francis is travelling to Sweden to take part in a service marking the beginning of preparations for the jubilee.

For many Catholics, the anniversary of the Reformation will be a matter of great sorrow. It is hard to see how any Catholic could celebrate an event which ruptured Western Christendom and rejected many teachings of the Church, and indeed this magazine has termed any prospect of a joint celebration a “naïve initiative”.

Yet this anniversary takes place in a new era in relations between Catholics and Lutherans, an ecumenical engagement inaugurated by the Second Vatican Council which allows each side to see the Reformation in a way that does not deny, but rather transcends, old polemics. This new encounter culminated in the 1999 “Common Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification”, officially received by both the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation, which expressed a common understanding of one of the hotly contested causes of the Reformation.

Certainly, the involvement of Catholics in the anniversary presents a challenge for both sides, and calls for a fresh approach to our Reformation legacy. “From Conflict to Communion” is the aptly titled document issued in 2013 by the official Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, outlining a common approach to the forthcoming anniversary of Luther. There are, traditionally, strongly partisan interpretations of the movement Luther started. For Catholics, “Reformation” means “division”, whereas for Protestants it means “rediscovery of the Scriptures”. Both points of view need to be taken seriously by each side.

It was Pope St John Paul II who spoke of an “exchange of gifts” as the fruit of ecumenical dialogue, and Pope Francis has identified the rediscovery of Scripture in the life of the Church as one of the gifts received from our Protestant colleagues. In an atmosphere where caricatures have been demolished and neuralgic terms revisited, the Catholic bishops of Germany have felt able to acknowledge some element of celebration to these events: not in any sense of the division of Christendom and rejection of the Catholic Church, but recognising in Martin Luther a “Gospel witness and teacher of the faith”.

For their part, Lutherans, according to the official prayer for commemoration of the Reformation, have agreed that in recalling “the events that led to the foundation of their churches, [they] do not wish to do so without their Catholic fellow Christians”.

Yet we would be wrong to ignore the disunity of past centuries, and our relations can only be honest if we acknowledge the pain and hurt that we have caused each other. Rightly, Pope Francis and his Lutheran hosts in Sweden will express repentance for the divisions and hostilities caused by the Reformation and reaction to it.

But as Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has pointed out, such collaboration can only be successful if it is grounded in a deeper relationship, one that places Christ firmly at the centre of our lives as Christians.

Modern ecumenism understands that it is when we are closest to Christ that we are closest to each other, so this anniversary is a call to Catholics and Lutherans alike to be more attentive to the Gospel. In this way the anniversary can be a stepping stone to future unity, rather than a rehearsing of past hurts. Another aspect of the service that Pope Francis will attend in Sweden will be thanksgiving for 50 years of ecumenical dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics.

There is no doubt that this anniversary presents a challenge to Catholics. Catholics cannot celebrate the Reformation, but our commemoration can be more than a bland acknowledgment of a historical anniversary. In the larger horizon of life in Christ and the unity for which he prayed, we may recognise – and even give thanks for – the contribution and witness of Martin Luther.

This article first appeared in the October 28 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here

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As Reformation anniversary nears, German bishops stress Protestant ties

World News

Portrait of Martin Luther by 16th-century German Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder. (CNS photo/Public domain)

By Jonathan Luxmoore • Catholic News Service • Posted August 11, 2016

OXFORD, England (CNS) — Germany’s Catholic bishops praised Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Reformation, as a “Gospel witness and teacher of the faith” and called for closer ties with Protestants.

In a 206-page report, “The Reformation in Ecumenical Perspective,” Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg, chairman of the German bishops’ ecumenical commission, said the “history of the Reformation has encountered a changeable reception in the Catholic Church, where its events and protagonists were long seen in a negative, derogatory light.”

“While the wounds are still felt to the present day, it is gratifying that Catholic theology has succeeded, in the meantime, in soberly reconsidering the events of the 16th century,” he said in the report, published Aug. 9 by Germany’s Bonn-based bishops’ conference.