Pope Francis pitches for Christian unity in Protestant bastion

Pope Francis arrives for a meeting with Queen Silvia and King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden at the King’s House monument in Lund, Sweden. (Photo: AFP)

Pope Francis arrived in Sweden on Monday on the latest leg of his mission to promote reconciliation and unity within the wider Christian family.

After touching down in the southern city of Malmo, the Argentine pontiff heads to nearby Lund for an ecumenical service marking the start of a year of celebrations for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.

The event marked 50 years of reconciliatory dialogue between the Catholic Church and Lutheranism, a tradition that was once fervently hostile to the authority and teachings of the Vatican.

Just by agreeing to attend, Francis has made a gesture that would have been unimaginable for all but his most recent predecessors.

The popes of the 16th century spent huge amounts of time and energy trying to stifle or reverse the reforming wave launched by the German monk Martin Luther when he nailed his “95 theses” to the door of a church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.

Monday’s meeting comes eight months after Francis became the first pope in almost 1,000 years to meet an Orthodox Patriarch.

The current leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics has also reached out to Anglicans.

And ahead of the visit, Francis reiterated the importance he attaches to Christian unity at a time when both believers and belief itself are under pressure in many parts of the world.

“When Christians are persecuted and murdered, they are chosen because they are Christians, not because they are Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Catholics or Orthodox,” Francis said in an interview with two Jesuit publications.

He also went out of his way to underline that Catholicism no longer regards Luther, who was excommunicated, as a heretical figure.