Integrity Magazine gets Leo XIV’s hopes for Augsburg 2030 right, but not his exact words

The published address reads: “As you have mentioned, the year 2030, which marks the 500th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, can become one such shared moment: a profound ecumenical experience that can give new energy and joy to the steps we will take towards full, visible unity” (Holy See Press Office). So the anniversary was raised by the Lutheran delegation, and the Pope welcomed it. The text has “new energy and joy” and “full, visible unity”, not “new energy and new joy” and “full and visible unity”.

Leo XIV said that when the Confession was read out on 25 June 1530 “the unity of the Western Church was imperiled but not yet shattered”. He hoped that by 2030 Catholics and Lutherans could “once again succeed in affirming together the pre-confessional ecumenical potential of the Confessio Augustana”. He appealed to theologians to “return… to the faith of the early Church and the Church Fathers” (Holy See Press Office). In the same address he called the 1999 Joint Declaration on justification “a milestone”. That declaration holds that the Lutheran teaching it sets out does not fall under Trent’s condemnations, while keeping those condemnations as “salutary warnings” (§§ 41–42) (Joint Declaration).