Pope visits spiritual home of Reformer

POPE Benedict XVI yesterday visited a chapel in Germany from where Martin Luther launched his attack on Rome, giving birth to the Reformation and the spread of Protestantism across Western Europe.

Joining leaders of Germany’s Protestant churches in the chapel at Erfurt, the Pope praised Luther for his “deep passion and driving force” in his beliefs, but failed to announce any concrete steps to achieve greater unity among Christians as some hoped.

German Lutheran leader Nikolaus Schneider told the Pope “it is time to take real steps for reconciliation” and suggested Catholics join Protestants in marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.

Benedict acknowledged there was talk the visit would produce an “ecumenical gift” but called that a “political misreading of faith and of ecumenism”.

He also warned his Lutheran hosts that what he called “a new form of Christianity” posed a challenge to mainstream Protestants and Catholics alike.

While not naming them, it was clear the Pope was referring to the evangelical and Pentecostal churches attracting converts in Third World countries.

Speaking on the second day of his third trip to his homeland, he said: “Faced with a new form of Christianity, which is spreading with overpowering missionary dynamism, sometimes in frightening ways, the mainstream Christian denominations often seem at a loss.

“This is a form of Christianity with little institutional depth, little rationality and even less dogmatic content, and with little stability. This worldwide phenomenon poses a question to us all: what is this new form of Christianity saying to us, for better and for worse?”

He is due to hold an open-air Mass in Erfurt today.