Pope Francis has urged Christians to “move beyond” the controversies of the past.
At an ecumenical prayer service at the Lutheran cathedral in Lund in Monday, to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the Pope said: “We Christians will be credible witnesses of mercy to the extent that forgiveness, renewal and reconciliation are daily experienced in our midst.”
With the prayer service, Pope Francis and leaders of the Lutheran World Federation launched a year of activities to mark the anniversary in 2017 of Martin Luther’s efforts to reform the Church.
Luther’s programme quickly developed into a schism. But the Pope said “our division distanced us from the primordial intuition of God’s people, who naturally yearn to be one, and that it was perpetuated historically by the powerful of this world rather than the faithful people.”
A joint statement signed in Lund by Pope Francis and Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan, president of the Lutheran World Federation, said, “Many members of our communities yearn to receive the Eucharist at one table as the concrete expression of full unity.”
However, the Pope offered no new openings to the idea of sharing Communion before full unity is achieved.
Speaking later at an ecumenical event in the Malmö arena, the Pope said: “For us Christians, it is a priority to go out and meet the outcasts and the marginalised of our world, and to make felt the tender and merciful love of God, who rejects no on and accepts everyone.”
The following day, the Pope celebrated Mass for Sweden’s Catholics in Malmö. The event was added to the Pope’s schedule: he had originally wanted to make an exclusively ecumenical trip, but changed his mind after Catholics in Sweden. a small community, expressed their wish for a papal Mass. In his homily at the Mass, the Pope offered some contemporary additions to the eight Beatitudes named by Jesus in Matthew 5.
The Pope said we ought to be able “to recognise and respond to new situations with fresh spiritual energy. Blessed are those who remain faithful while enduring evils inflicted on them by others, and forgive them from their heart. Blessed are those who look into the eyes of the abandoned and marginalised, and show them their closeness.
“Blessed are those who see God in every person, and strive to make others also discover him. Blessed are those who protect and care for our common home. Blessed are those who renounce their own comfort in order to help others. Blessed are those who pray and work for full communion between Christians.”
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