Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Francis will celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by attending an ecumenical service in Sweden as a guest of the Lutheran church, the Vatican said Monday.

In a highly symbolic act of reconciliation that would even recently have been unthinkable for a Catholic pontiff, Francis will visit the Swedish city of Lund on October 31 for a commemoration jointly organised by his own inter-faith agency and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).

The surprise move will see the head of the world’s Catholics worship alongside the heirs to a religious tradition founded in opposition to the church of Rome and which once regarded the pope as the anti-Christ. MORE