Pope Leo XIV has met with a delegation from the Lutheran World Federation, expressing his appreciation for how Catholic-Lutheran relations have "matured both spiritually and theologically over the decades."

Among those Leo met at the Oct. 1 meeting was Rev. Anne Burghardt, the Federation's General Secretary and an ordained pastor in the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church.

They discussed the upcoming 500th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession.

The Augsburg Confession, published in 1530, is the Lutheran Church's primary confession of faith and one of the most important documents of the Protestant Reformation.

After the meeting, Burhardt said in an interview with Vatican News, "We're now moving towards celebrating 500 years of Augsburg Confession, which the Pope mentioned in his speech, expressing his hope for the ecumenical potential of this process.

"For me personally, it was the second time meeting Pope Leo, because I was able to come to his inauguration. But for most of our delegation it was the first time meeting him, and we perceived him as very attentive, very present, very thoughtful and very open."

        -  LWF President Bishop Henrik Stubkjær

LWF President Bishop Henrik Stubkjær led the delegation of Geneva Communion Office staff and LWF Vice-Presidents representing member churches around the globe.

He thanked the Roman Catholic leader's repeated calls for "disarmament, the rejection of weapons and the need for dialogue," as well as concerns outlined in his encyclical letter Magnifica Humanitas about the future of Artificial Intelligence.

"The LWF understands itself as a movement within the one ecumenical movement for the sake of the one church catholic," Stubkjær said.

He recalled the Joint Commemoration of the Reformation "exactly 10 years ago this month," as Lutheran leaders came together with Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis, in the Swedish cities of Lund and Malmö.

"The ecclesial journey from conflict to communion between Catholics and Lutherans has borne significant fruit, not least in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, which continues to inspire wider ecumenical cooperation," he noted.

"It is our hope that Catholics and Lutherans will be able to commemorate this anniversary together on 25 June 2030 in Augsburg where the Confession was first presented."

For her part Burghardt told Vatican News, "We have had a bilateral dialogue with Catholic Church since 1967. It started right after the Second Vatican Council.

"And in the current phase, we are looking into ways to come up with a joint understanding or joint statement on the Augsburg Confession, which is a confession that has real relevance for Lutheran churches across the world."

She said that although the document is often seen as a confessional document, "its content has a highly ecumenical potential in terms of bringing different Churches together around some of the main questions of our faith: How do we understand God? How do we how do we understand Jesus Christ? How do we understand justification, and how we understand the Church?"