“This year of commemoration offers us the opportunity to take a further step ahead, looking at the past without rancor, but in accordance with Christ and in communion with Him, to re-propose to the men and women of our time the radical newness of Jesus, the limitless mercy of God: precisely what the Reformers in their time wanted to stimulate,” the Pope said Feb. 6. “The fact that their call to renewal gave rise to developments that led to divisions among Christians was certainly tragic,” he added. “Believers no longer felt they were brothers and sisters in faith, but rather adversaries and competitors; for too long they bore hostility and engaged in struggles, fomented by interests of politics and power, at times even without scruple about using violence against each other, brothers against brothers.”