Catholic and Lutheran leaders have issued a joint prayer thanking God for the “insights” received through the Reformation. The prayer is part of a service devised by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation in advance of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation next year. The first jointly developed liturgical order is based on the report From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. The Common Prayer, as it is called, is led by two presiders, one Catholic and one Lutheran. One prayer reads: “Thanks be to you, O God, for the many guiding theological and spiritual insights that we have all received through the Reformation. Thanks be to you for the good transformations and reforms that were set in motion by the Reformation or by struggling with its challenges. Thanks be to you for the proclamation of the Gospel that occurred during the Reformation and that since then has strengthened countless people to live lives of faith in Jesus Christ. Amen.” The commemoration must “also allow room for both Lutherans and Catholics to experience the pain over failures and trespasses, guilt and sin in the persons and events that are being remembered”, the Common Prayer says. Another reading says: “Lutherans and Catholics often focused on what separated them from each other rather than looking for what united them ... Their failures resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people ... We deeply regret the evil things that Catholics and Lutherans have mutually done to each other.”