Commemorations of next year’s 500th anniversary of the Reformation – which led to the separation of protestant churches from the Catholic Church – have begun with a combined prayer service in Lund Cathedral, Sweden, attended by Pope Francis and the Revd Dr Martin Junge, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation. The participation of Pope Francis at the start of the year of commemorations is hugely significant and symbolises the growing ecumenical thaw which has been taking place over the past 50 years.

The prayer service is taking place in Lund Cathedral, which began life in 1080 as the seat of the Catholic archiepiscopal diocese of Lund; but since Danish Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s, has been a Lutheran cathedral. It became part of the Church of Sweden when the Province of Skåne (Scania) was ceded from Denmark to Sweden in 1658.

Through the Porvoo Communion, the Church of Sweden is in full communion with several Anglican churches, including the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, the Lusitanian Church of Portugal, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Reformed Episcopal Church of Spain, and the Church in Wales. Elsewhere across the globe, other Anglican churches are in varying degrees of unity and communion with other Lutheran churches.

“We are on our way from conflict to communion,” Archbishop Antje Jackelén, leader of the Church of Sweden, said at a press conference, referencing the ground-breaking 2013 joint report between the two churches. “We are going to express our joy and gratitude for what we have in common: namely, the Gospel of Jesus Christ which unites us – that can be celebrated never enough.

“But there are also things that we definitely do not want to celebrate; but to repent and express our lament and sorrow; and that is, of course, the pain that division has caused throughout so many centuries.”
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Professing belief in the resurrection of the dead and affirming that the human body is an essential part of a person’s identity, the Catholic Church insists that the bodies of the deceased be treated with respect and laid to rest in a consecrated place.

While the Catholic Church continues to prefer burial in the ground, it accepts cremation as an option, but forbids the scattering of ashes and the growing practice of keeping cremated remains at home, said Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“Caring for the bodies of the deceased, the church confirms its faith in the resurrection and separates itself from attitudes and rites that see in death the definitive obliteration of the person, a stage in the process of reincarnation or the fusion of one’s soul with the universe,” the cardinal told reporters Oct. 25.
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Pope Francis will join people from all over the world in celebration of the ecumenical developments of the Catholic and Lutheran Churches. The event takes place 31 October in southern Sweden. The celebration will be divided into two, one in a cathedral in Lund and one for 10,000 people in a sports arena in Malmö.

The 31 October is called “Reformation Day” by Lutherans. It was the day Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.

The Lund Cathedral ceremony will be a prayer with the pope and the president of the Lutheran church together. It’s the first time for something like this to happen. Then later that day, there will be performances, songs and prayers in Malmö. All of them will be under the general theme of “Together in Hope”.

The programme will include testimonies of people from around the world. One of the speakers is Marguerite Barankitse, the “Mother of Burundi”. She is the founder of “Maison Shalom”. It helps orphans of the civil war lead a normal life. They can get an education and have a chance at a good future. She has experienced brutal war, but continues to have hope for peace.
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The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, paid a private visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby at Lambeth Palace yesterday (Tuesday). Patriarch Kirill was in the UK to mark the 300th anniversary of the Diocese of Sourozh – the Russian Orthodox Church in Britain and Ireland. Earlier, Archbishop Welby and the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, were in attendance when Patriarch Kirill visited The Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Bishop Chartres takes the lead on the C of E’s relationships with the Orthodox Churches, and was also present at Lambeth Palace for the meeting with Patriarch Kirill and his delegation.

Archbishop Welby and Patriarch Kirill spoke about “their shared compassion for Christian, and other, minorities in many parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, where they have been systematically targeted and persecuted and their communities decimated,” a Lambeth Palace spokesperson said.
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Canada’s Catholic bishops will no longer be part of Canada’s ecumenical social justice coalition known as Kairos.

The decision taken by a majority of bishops at the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops’ annual plenary meeting was prompted by a combination of ideological differences and minor legal changes in the structure of the ecumenical coalition to meet tax compliance concerns of the Canada Revenue Agency. For legal and tax purposes, Kairos has been a part of the United Church of Canada since it was founded in 2001.
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Joe Tosini believes that on the last day Jesus will judge people on whether they fed the hungry, clothed the naked and, especially, whether they loved one another, not on whether they were baptized with a sprinkling of water as an infant in a Catholic Church or by being plunged into a pool as an adult in an evangelical service.

Tosini, a Pentecostal Christian, is founder of the Phoenix-based John 17 Movement, an ecumenical initiative about forming relationships and friendships among Christians.

Unlike the formal ecumenical dialogues the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and mainline Protestant churches engage in, the John 17 initiative does not involve theological dialogue and the examination of doctrinal similarities and differences.
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If Christians are called to live their faith concretely, then they cannot leave out concrete signs of the unity to which Jesus calls them.

And just because the formal Anglican-Roman Catholic theological dialogue has been forced to grapple with new church-dividing attitudes toward issues such as the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex marriages, it does not mean that common prayer led by Anglican and Catholic leaders and concrete collaboration by Catholic and Anglican parishes are simply window dressing.

Dozens of Catholic and Anglican bishops and several hundred priests and laity from both communities gathered in Rome in early October to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Vatican meeting of Blessed Paul VI and Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey of Canterbury, almost 50 years of formal theological dialogue through the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (known as ARCIC) and the 50th anniversary of the Anglican Center in Rome.

The celebrations, highlighted by an ecumenical evening prayer service Oct. 5 with Pope Francis and Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, coincided with a meeting of a newer body, the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, known as IARCCUM.
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