In a resounding endorsement of the ecumenical movement, Pope Leo XIV is drawing parallels between the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea and the Lutheran-led ecumenical Conference in Stockholm, referring to Catholics and Protestants as “fellow disciples of Christ.”
“Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church has wholeheartedly embraced the ecumenical path,” Leo told the participants of the 2025 Ecumenical Week.
Leo, who has been praised for rejecting Roman Catholic exclusivism in his quest for Christian unity, likened the unity signalled by the Council of Nicaea (325) to the Stockholm conference, which brought together 600 Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant leaders in 1925.
The bishops at Nicaea “articulated the faith that continues to bind Christians together” and “stood as a courageous sign of unity amidst difference — an early witness to the conviction that our shared confession can overcome division and foster,” Leo stated. “A similar desire animated the 1925 Conference in Stockholm, convened by the pioneer of the early ecumenical movement, Archbishop Nathan Söderblom, then Lutheran Archbishop of Uppsala,” who “called on his Christian brothers and sisters not to wait for agreement on every point of theology, but to unite in ‘practical Christianity.’
“While the Catholic Church was not represented at that first gathering, I can affirm, with humility and joy, that we stand with you today as fellow disciples of Christ, recognizing that what unites us is far greater than what divides us.”
Groundbreaking Decree
Emphasizing the Second Vatican Council’s groundbreaking decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, Leo explained “that the unity Christ wills for his Church must be visible, and that such unity grows through theological dialogue, common worship where possible, and shared witness in the face of humanity’s suffering.”
The pope hailed the growing strength of the move toward unity through “recent ecumenical milestones,” including the “new chapter in Catholic-Lutheran relations” signaled by Pope John Paul II’s visit to Sweden’s Uppsala Cathedral and his welcome by Lutheran Archbishop Bertil Werkström, primate of the Church of Sweden.
“It was followed by the joint commemoration of the Reformation in Lund in 2016, when Pope Francis joined Lutheran leaders in common prayer and repentance,” Leo observed.
During that event, Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, acknowledged “with gratitude that the Reformation helped give greater centrality to sacred Scripture in the Church’s life” and that “the spiritual experience of Martin Luther challenges us to remember that apart from God we can do nothing.
“With the concept ‘by grace alone,’ he [Luther] reminds us that God always takes the initiative, prior to any human response, even as He seeks to awaken that response. The doctrine of justification thus expresses the essence of human existence before God,” Francis said.
Earlier that year, when a reporter asked Francis if he would perhaps “annul or withdraw the excommunication of Martin Luther,” the pope affirmed Luther as a “reformer” whose “intentions were not mistaken.”
“And today Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err. He made a medicine for the Church,” Francis stressed.
Divisive Issue
Catholics are bitterly divided over the issue of ecumenical unity with Protestants.
Vatican II “embraced a novel doctrine in order to enable Ecumenism, the effort to procure ‘Christian unity’ with Orthodox and Protestant sects in some way other than by requiring Protestants to convert to Catholicism,” wrote Monsignor Joseph Fenton, who served on the Pontifical Theology Commission in preparation for Vatican II.
In his declaration Mortalium Animos: On Religious Unity (1928), Pope Pius XI definitively declared that the “Apostolic See cannot on any terms take part in their [Protestant] assemblies, nor is it anyway lawful for Catholics either to support or to work for such enterprises; for if they do so they will be giving countenance to a false Christianity, quite alien to the one Church of Christ.”
While Pius XI insisted that the “union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it,” Pope Benedict XVI, in an epochal U-turn, stated that “this unity does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history. Absolutely not!”
Traditionalist Catholics blasted Leo’s greetings to the Stockholm conference.
“Leo’s message tells Lutherans, Anglicans, and Orthodox that ‘what unites us is far greater than what divides us.’ This is false on its face. If the Eucharist, papal primacy, Marian dogmas, and moral law are mere ‘divisions,’ then unity is reduced to vague good feelings,” Chris Jackson wrote on Substack. “Leo’s message to the Ecumenical Week in Stockholm may sound pious, but beneath the rhetoric lies the true engine of the postconciliar revolution: ecumenism as an end in itself. What began at Vatican II with Unitatis Redintegratio has matured into a theology of horizontal fraternity in which truth is relativized.”
Toning Down the Papacy
Leo earlier signaled that he is willing to tone down Catholic supremacist positions on the papacy for the sake of Christian unity.
“Rome, Constantinople, and all the other Sees are not called to vie for primacy, lest we risk finding ourselves like the disciples who, along the way, even as Jesus was announcing his coming passion, argued about which of them was the greatest,” he preached in July. “Unity among those who believe in Christ is one of the signs of God’s gift of consolation; Scripture promises that ‘in Jerusalem you will be comforted,’” citing Isaiah 66:13.
The pope explained that ecumenical events like the current pilgrimage are possible only because, in December 1965, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras lifted the historic excommunications imposed by both Rome and the East following the historic schism of 1054.
Leo’s speech to the ecumenical pilgrims follows his trailblazing inaugural papal address in which he pointed to Christ, rather than Peter, as the foundational “rock” of Christianity, using the term “sister Christian churches” to mark his desire for ecumenical unity, as The Stream reported earlier this year.
Leo’s message to the Stockholm Conference revives hopes for Christian unity, given that the historic gathering in 1925 was the culminating event in Söderblom’s ecumenical efforts, laying the foundation for future ecumenical unity.
Söderblom is best known as the architect of the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century and had already begun to move toward intercommunion between the Swedish Church and the Church of England as early as 1909.
The archbishop, who was fluent in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic, preached in Paris from 1894 to 1901, where his congregation included Alfred Nobel and August Strindberg, as well as Swedish and Norwegian painters, authors, businessmen, diplomats, and visitors.
In 1890, he attended the Christian Student Conference in New England and, after listening to a lecture by a visiting clergyman, wrote in his diary a sentence that was to prove prophetic,
“Lord, give me humility and wisdom to serve the great cause of the free unity of thy church.”
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1930.
Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
