Pope Praises 'Ecumenical Dialogue' with Lutherans in Poland
Episcopal News Service. June 21, 1995 [95-1159B]
(ENI) Pope John Paul II recently praised the "intense ecumenical dialogue" between Roman Catholics and Lutherans during a meeting with Polish Lutheran pastors in southern Poland. He said that the dialogue in his home country was "growing and deepening" at diocesan and parish levels "in the deep conviction that much unites us." He added that the idea of freedom of conscience "did not mature easily in the European consciousness," and had cost "many victims on both sides," before being "fully and definitively accepted." The Pope said that "it is appropriate that, as the second millennium of Christianity draws to a close, the church should become more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel, and, instead of offering the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal."