Pope Francis Just Did What the Church Should Have Done Decades Ago

Suspect there are cranial detonations under a number of red beanies on the banks of the Tiber these days, and it's even money on who's revolving faster inside his crypt—Pope Leo X or the angry monk who so plagued his papacy. Papa Francesco is in Sweden, talking to the Lutherans. The Guardian has all the details.

Christian leaders and congregations will spend the next 12 months consolidating moves towards greater cooperation and dialogue after centuries of division. In the first papal visit to Sweden in more than 25 years, Francis will lead prayers asking "forgiveness for divisions perpetuated by Christians from the two traditions". On Tuesday, he will celebrate mass in Malmö before around 10,000 people. In Germany, leaders of the Catholic and main Protestant churches have issued a joint text calling for a "healing of memories" of past divisions. An ecumenical pilgrimage to the Holy Land aimed at highlighting common roots despite separation has just concluded.

If you are concluding that Papa Francesco is carrying around an empty bag similar to the one that the president is toting these days, you wouldn't be far wrong. Naturally, those in HMC still nursing a grudge over the Peace of Westphalia are having conniption fits.

The moves are not without controversy, however. "There are rightwing Roman Catholics who find the whole thing profoundly distasteful," said Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of church history at Oxford and author of The Reformation: A History. "But they're the sort of people who hate the present pope anyway."

It's hard to measure how stunning this is to someone—like me—who grew up in the reactionary American Catholic Church of the 1950s and early 1960s. You were taught not even to set foot in a Protestant church on the pain of mortal sin. Hell, it was even considered weird to enter other Catholic churches outside your own parish, let alone those funky Eastern Orthodox churches where they used pita bread for Communion. I was not allowed to join the best Boy Scout troop in my town because it was sponsored by the local Congregational church.