According to tradition, in School October 1517 Luther posted his theses on indulgence on the door of the Church in Wittenberg. This was the beginning of the Reformation and in the consequence the splitting of the Churches. It was often said that the Reformation had its roots in the abuses in the Roman Church and especially the Papacy. Nevertheless, one has to keep in mind, that the centre of Luthers approach was not the critique of the Church of his time, but a message of the justification of the sinner by God. This he regarded as the core of the biblical message. Exactly in this question could the Christian Churches find a consensus, formulated in 1999 in the Joint Declaration on Justification. Both sides declared that differences in this context must no longer separate the Churches. So the jubilee of 2017 will be celebrated in an ecumenical openness. It can help to establish a new community between Christian Churches.

Martin Luther; the Reformation; the Protestant churches; Roman Catholic; justification