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Is the Pope Catholic? Now he plans to rehabilitate ‘heretic’ Martin Luther

The Pope is planning to rehabilitate Martin Luther - whose actions instigated the Protestant Reformation ? by arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.

Benedict XVI will issue his findings on the 16th-century German theologian after discussing him at the papal summer residence, Castelgandolfo, during his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians, the Ratzinger Schülerkreis.

Luther was and condemned for heresy and excommunicated in 1521 by Pope Leo X, who had initially dismissed him as ?a drunken German? and predicted he would ?change his mind when sober?.

Vatican insiders say the 80-year-old Pope - himself born in Germany - will argue that his countryman was not a heretic after all.

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Some scholars have suggested recently that Luther did not share the view of some Protestants during the Reformation that the concept of succession referred only to God’s Word and not to church hierarchies.

Luther, born in 1483, was appalled on visiting Rome in 1510 to witness the wealth, worldliness and corruption of the papacy.

He insisted that the Bible, not the Vatican, was the sole source of religious authority - and to underline his point he translated it from Latin.

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In the famous 95 Theses which he nailed the door of a Wittenberg church in 1517, Luther attacked the practice of selling papal ?indulgences? granting remission of sin. This act is generally regarded as the spark of the Reformation.

The news of the re-evaluation of Luther comes hot on the heels of the revelation that the Vatican plans a statue of Galileo, the astronomer it once tried for heresy, for the fourth centenary next year of his invention of the telescope. Both are part of an attempt to soften Pope Benedict’s image as a hardline conservative.

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