VATICAN:POPE BENEDICT XVI plans to "rehabilitate" Martin Luther later this year and to declare that the man who set in train events that led to the Protestant Reformation did not plan to split Christianity but to rid it of corruption. In a document to be published next September, the pope will argue that Luther was not a heretic.
Martin Luther was excommunicated and condemned for heresy in 1521 by Pope Leo X, who in 1518 had described him as "a drunken German who will change his mind when sober".
An Augustinian priest, Martin Luther was appalled by the power, wealth and corruption of the papacy on a visit to Rome in 1510.
He argued that the Bible, not the papacy, was the only source of religious authority and that salvation could be attained by faith alone without any church intervention. He had the Bible translated into German, making it accessible to ordinary people for the first time.
In 1517 he famously pinned his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenburg, objecting to the sale of indulgences by the church to raise funds to pay for St Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Cardinal Walter Kaspar, president of the Vatican's council for promoting Christian unity, said this week that "we have much to learn from Martin Luther, beginning with the importance he attached to the word of God". Luther had "anticipated aspects of reform which the church has adopted over time". Cardinal Kaspar felt this move by the pope would help ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic and Reformed/Protestant churches.
In another gesture of rehabilitation, it emerged this week that the Vatican plans to erect a statue of Galileo within its gardens, near where the great scientist was held awaiting trial on heresy charges for declaring that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
His views were found to be "absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical because expressly contrary to holy scriptures". Galileo saved his life by recanting and lived under house arrest until he died in 1642.
The unveiling of the statue is just one event planned for next year by the church to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's development of the telescope.
It is further reported from Rome that Cardinal John Henry Newman, founder of the University Church on St Stephen's Green in Dublin and the Catholic University, which evolved into UCD, may be beatified this year. He was declared "venerable" in 1991.