John Paul II received in audience the Reverend Christian
Krause, bishop of the German Lutheran Evangelical Church and president of the
Lutheran World Federation, his wife and entourage.
The Vatican press office gave no other details of today's meeting.
The Lutheran World Federation has 136 member churches in 76 countries,
representing 61.7 million of the 65.4 million Lutherans worldwide.
In 1999 the Holy See and the Lutheran World Federation signed a Joint Declaration on the doctrine of
justification. With it, they surmounted some of the issues linked to man's
cooperation in salvation, which due to mutual misunderstandings were at the
origin of the Reformation.