(Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks at a news conference at European Union (EU) leaders summit in Brussels October 19, 2012. REUTERS/Yves Herman)
Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germany’s Protestant and Roman Catholic churches on Monday to stress their common beliefs at ceremonies marking the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation.
Although still five years away, the date has already prompted debate between Protestants preparing major celebrations and Catholics who rue the rebellion of the German monk Martin Luther in 1517 as the start of a painful split in western Christianity.
The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), the country’s largest association of Protestant churches, wants the Catholics to attend its planned “Luther Jubilee”, and its annual synod in a Baltic resort near Luebeck is debating how to make it possible for them to do so.
Merkel, daughter of a Protestant pastor, made a rare visit to the synod and said that, in a secularized world, Christian churches should stress what united them, rather than their enduring theological differences.
