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Catholic World News News Feature

Lutheran leader raps Vatican stand on Reformation communities September 12, 2007

The Lutheran bishop of Greenland has criticized a Vatican statement on the role of the Catholic Church.

Speaking at an ecumenical leaders' convention on the environment, hosted by the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople, Lutheran Bishop Sofie Peterson took aim at a document released in July by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on the unique role of the Catholic Church in the economy of salvation.

In that document, the Vatican had said that Protestant communities, because they have not preserved the Eucharist or the apostolic succession, "cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called 'churches' in the proper sense." Bishop Peterson objected to that statement of doctrine.

"I do not understand, I truly do not understand why the Vatican has done this," said the Lutheran leader, the divorced mother of a teenage daughter. "We have a church, we have a church and the Vatican must respect us. It was sad to read this document, I was profoundly hurt.”

While 90% of Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants are Lutheran, only 5% practice their Lutheran faith. There are only about 100 Catholics in the nation; the only Catholic parish, Christ the King, is located in the capital of Nuuk.