‘Make It Visible’: Vatican Pushes For Unity Across Christian Denominations
ROME — In a profoundly positive appraisal of the Protestant Reformation, high-ranking Vatican officials are championing the Augsburg Confession — a pivotal Lutheran text — highlighting it as a shared basis for Christian unity, as the 500th anniversary of the document approaches in 2030.
Marking the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity from January 18-25, Cardinal Kurt Koch, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, underscored the “widespread discussion” about the Catholic Church possibly recognizing the document.
The authors “express their fundamental conviction that it is a Catholic confession,” Koch wrote in the Italian edition of the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano. “With this orientation in mind, we cannot underestimate the ecumenical significance of the Diet of Augsburg.”
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Emphasizing Pope Leo XIV’s resolute commitment to ecumenism, Archbishop Flavio Pace, the dicastery’s secretary, stressed the significance of commemorating the confession to “rediscover a common foundation” and “rediscover something more for our present.”
Pace told the Italian edition of Vatican News that the role of the Augsburg Confession was “an attempt to find common ground” and “a shared profession of faith among the countries we now identify with the Reformation,” after Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther in 1521.
Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s friend and colleague, drafted the “Confessio Augustana” for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530. Its goal was to peacefully settle the ecclesiastical split by showing that reformation teachings were genuinely Catholic when viewed through scripture and tradition.
The confession “certainly deserves consideration as a stellar ecumenical confession of faith,” Fr. Lorenzo Murrone, the co-pastor of Rome’s Confessional Lutheran Church of Italy, told Religion Unplugged. “Its intent and spirit were precisely to foster clarity and understanding between the nascent evangelicals and the Roman Catholic emperor.”
“It also rooted the reformation’s justification in church history and scripture, so much that Melanchthon can close it by saying, ‘in doctrine and ceremonies we have received nothing contrary to Scripture or the Church universal,’” the Latin and Greek scholar added. “But history has shown us that confessions … can become casualties in word-battles, losing sight of the sensus auctoris [author’s meaning.’”
He said religious leaders need to take an honest approach and ask: “What did Melanchthon mean by this — and do I agree?”
Affirming the confession’s dual purpose, Koch explained how the first part demonstrates that “the evangelical communities accord with the doctrinal foundations of the early church,” while the second part justifies the abolition of improper practices which were “not divisive issues at the ecclesiastical level.”
This shows that the Reformation “at its origins, conceived of itself as a movement for the renewal of all Christianity in the spirit of the gospel, convinced that it was a universal renewal of the church and not a reformation that had shattered the unity of the church,” Koch said.
At the 450th anniversary of the publication of “Augustana” in 1980, Pope John Paul II praised it as “the last energetic attempt at reconciliation” — noting that “even if the bridge was not built successfully, the storm of the times has spared important pillars of this bridge.”
Joseph Ratzinger, who later Pope Benedict XIV, also praised the efforts “to achieve recognition of the Augsburg Confession as Catholic and thus to affirm the catholicity of the churches of the Augsburg Confession, which makes possible a corporate union in diversity.”
In his column, Koch concluded that the “Confessio Augustana” was not accepted as a Catholic confession in 1980 despite extensive efforts, primarily due to the confusion over the precise meaning to be attributed to the term “recognition.”
Koch and Pace’s endorsement of the Protestant Reformation’s central text echoes the relentless thrust by Pope Leo XIV towards Christian unity since his election last May.
For example, in his apostolic letter “Unitate Fidei,” marking the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, Leo urged Catholics to “leave behind theological controversies that have lost their [reason for existence]” and unite with Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox “in one faith and one love.”
Last October, Leo hosted the Anglican archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, and King Charles at a joint service, bestowing on Charles the title of the Royal Confrater of the papal basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls and ordered a throne to be permanently installed in the basilica for Charles and his successors. Leo and Cottrell led the service together.
At an ecumenical service that culminted the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on Jan. 25, Leo preached: “We are one! We already are! Let us recognize it, experience it and make it visible!”
Historians agree.
“Luther was a prophetic voice,” Jesuit scholar Fr. Bryan Lobo, professor of missiology and former dean at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, said. “Acknowledging the Reformation’s contributions and recognizing the Augsburg Confession as a paradigm for Christian unity would further the cause of mission and a unified Christian witness to a broken world that needs to hear the Gospel.”
Jules Gomes has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.