Pope Benedict XVI spent much of the second day of his visit to Germany in Erfut, where the former Augustinian monk and reformer, Martin Luther lived.
On Friday, the Pope met with leaders of Germany's Protestant churches and shared in an ecumenical prayer service.
The Thuringian capital , Erfurt where Pope Benedict arrived on Friday takes its name from water, and water does flow right through this city in the River Gera. But this is no backwater. Not just because it's been accepted into the "Historic Highlights of Germany" , as offering special charm, architectural brilliance and historic character .
Not just because of its landmark sandstone inhabited medieval bridge "Kramerbrucke" , or Merchant's Bridge which indicates an ancient bustling crossroads of commerce. But because it's a place linked to people, famous people. From Goethe to Schiller, from Bach to Liszt , from the Russian Czar to Napoleon who once held a princely meeting here .
But above all it's famous as the land of Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk who once lived and worked here. Most famous for his clamorous break from Rome, as he nailed his 95 theses in nearby Wittenberg sparking religious and political reform. It's a well known story one to which with the Pope's arrival here almost five centuries later, a new chapter has been added.
And the entry into this medieval City of a Roman Pontiff and son of this German nation, who would tread the very turf where Luther once trod, would kneel down on the wooden choir stalls where Luther once prayed was a moving one.
Beginning with his first gesture in this place which until 1990 was part of Eastern Germany: a visit to the very place where Martin Luther was ordained to the priesthood as a Catholic priest in 1507. Today an imposing gothic Cathedral going back to the 14th to 15th centuries although, the original Romanesque Church goes back to 1154 .
It's the “Mariendom” with its striking stained glass windows, one of which depicts, Augustine, a saint especially dear to him and to Luther by the way .
The great nave was empty and who knows what thoughts crossed this German Pope's mind as he entered the Cathedral. Whether they wandered to the day Luther began his priestly life here, or perhaps to all those Christians Catholics and Lutherans alike who before reunification 21 years ago had kept the faith alive here .
Certainly when within the Cathedral he venerated the relics of Saint Boniface the Anglo-Saxon Missionary known as 'The Apostle of the Germans', his thoughts must have turned to Rome.This Saint who in 742 established himself as a Bishop here in accord with one of Benedict's predecessors, Pope Zacharias.
So successful was Saint Boniface's evangelizing mission that Erfurt was once dubbed German Rome because of the numerous Churches here .
But it was time for the Pope from Rome to dedicate himself fully to the separated brethren, he as a German, knows best.
To the representatives of the Protestant EKD, a Federation of 22 Lutheran, Unified and Reformed Protestant Regional Churches in Germany headed by Council Chair, Pastor Nikolaus Schneider and enter into the Chapter Room of the Monastery of Saint Augustine with its stunning stained glass lancet windows .
He covered the three kilometres to this monastery from Erfurt where Luther lived and worked from 1505 to 1511 by car.
And in the Chapter Room the Pope listened to his hosts , among them Pastor Schneider who highlighted how the stones in this room can testify how Martin Luther was a member of the Order of Saint Augustine right here . Does nothing ever lasting , he said, link him with the Roman Catholic Church, can we not also understand Martin Luther , the Augustinian Monk from Erfurt , to be a hinge between our churches, belongs to both?
And Benedict XVI replied: “It was the error of the Reformation period that for the most part we could only see what divided us and we failed to grasp existentially what we have in common in terms of the great deposit of sacred Scripture and the early Christian creeds. The great ecumenical step forward of recent decades is that we have become aware of all this common ground and that we acknowledge it as we pray and sing together, as we make our joint commitment to the Christian ethos in our dealings with the world, as we bear common witness to the God of Jesus Christ in this world as our undying foundation.”
The Pope delivered this address before sharing , within the Augustinian Monastery where Luther lived between 1505 and 1511 , an ecumenical celebration in the Church of Saint Augustine, the oldest part of the monastery during which a Psalm would be read in the translation of Martin Luther.
In this Church with its noteworthy early 14th century Gothic stained-glass windows 300 people had already gathered and there was anticipation and song . And the congregation listened to Psalm 146 read by Protestant Bishop Friedriech Weber in the German translation of Martin Luther.
And then the Pope spoke spelling out with clarity his views: “Prior to the Pope’s visit , he said, there was some talk of an “ecumenical gift” which was expected from this visit. There is no need for me to specify the gifts mentioned in this context. Here I would only say that this reflects a political misreading of faith and of ecumenism. In general, when a Head of State visits a friendly country, contacts between the various parties take place beforehand to arrange one or more agreements between the two states: by weighing respective benefits and drawbacks a compromise is reached which in the end appears beneficial for both parties, so that a treaty can then be signed. But the faith of Christians does not rest on such a weighing of benefits and drawbacks. A self-made faith is worthless. Faith is not something we work out intellectually or negotiate between us. It is the foundation for our lives. Unity grows not by the weighing of benefits and drawbacks but only by entering ever more deeply into the faith in our thoughts and in our lives. In the past fifty years, and especially after the visit of Pope John Paul II some thirty years ago, we have drawn much closer together, and for this we can only be grateful.”