Bavaria: Bishop: Reformation Day Day of "Freedom and Confidence"

The ideas of the Reformation didn't stand a chance in the south of today's Bavaria.

Bavaria: Bishop: Reformation Day Day of "Freedom and Confidence"

The ideas of the Reformation didn't stand a chance in the south of today's Bavaria. But in Franconia. Coburg and Nuremberg, for example, became important places in the history of the Protestant Church.

Coburg (dpa / lby) - The Bavarian Evangelical Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm described the upcoming Reformation Day as a "day of freedom" and at the same time as confidence. On October 31, 1517, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther published his 95 theses in Wittenberg, heralding the Reformation and the schism in the church.

In the course of the events triggered by Martin Luther, believers recognized that the God of the Bible was gracious, loving and forgiving towards people, said Bedford-Strohm. "We rely on the God who has shown so many times how he can make good out of the bad."

Bedford-Strohm will celebrate Reformation Day this Monday (October 31) with a service in Coburg in the Moriz Church. And that is definitely a place with symbolic power, as the reformer himself preached here: Martin Luther arrived in Coburg on Good Friday 1530 and spent five months here because he was under imperial ban. Coburg offered him refuge.

But not only Coburg played an important role in the history of the Reformation, but also Nuremberg: the Franconian city was the first imperial city to officially introduce the Reformation in 1525. Nuremberg was considered the media center of the time - Reformation writings were printed and distributed here. Munich, on the other hand, became the bulwark of the Counter-Reformation and a bastion of the Catholic.