Hope for Unity

The Pope visits Lutherans

John Paul engaged in diplomacy of an entirely different sort last week, becoming the first Pope to preach in a Lutheran church and the first to join in any Protestant worship in Italy. The place was the severe, white stone Christuskirche (Christ Church), which mainly serves the German diplomatic and business community. A group of Lutherans had approached John Paul when he visited a nearby Catholic parish in 1982 and asked, "Won't you come and visit our church too?" The Pope later raised the subject with the local pastor, Christoph Meyer.

Arriving at the church, the Pope greeted worshipers along the aisles as TV cameras followed his every gesture. There was no applause from the congregation, rather bowing of heads and smiles, the result not of chilliness but of Lutheran formality. Instead of his magisterial miter, the Pope wore a simple white skullcap. Equality was stressed even in such details as the size and placement of each chair.

Meyer opened worship with an invocation written by Martin Luther, who nearly five centuries ago had burned Pope Leo X's excommunication bull: "We pray you, Lord, and we beg you that with the aid of your Spirit, you will return to unity what was fragmented . . ." In his homily, spoken in German, the Pope declared, "This meeting moves me to the bottom of my heart." He added, "We ardently desire unity and we make every effort to achieve it without being discouraged by the difficulties we may meet on our road." The words echoed a papal letter honoring the 500th anniversary of Luther's birth, which spoke of a man of "profound religiousness."

Yet neither letter nor homily gave any indication that John Paul is about to foster closer Catholic-Lutheran relations. Explains a Vatican prelate who is very close to John Paul: "This Pope understands there can be no merger of Catholic and Protestant churches for many, many years, and probably many generations." But combined with John Paul's visit to the mother church of Anglicanism at Canterbury in 1982, the Lutheran service was one more step in the long process of reunification. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.