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Protestant and Catholic leaders are gathering in Chicago on Thursday to mark the tenth anniversary of a landmark ecumenical agreement made between the two faith traditions.

Considered the most significant agreement since the Reformation, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was signed by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation on Oct. 31, 1999 in an effort to end centuries of doctrinal dispute.

“For hundreds of years, the issue of justification by faith divided Catholics and Protestants,” said Bishop Gregory Palmer, president of The United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops, in a released statement. “This agreement celebrates consensus on the basic truths of the doctrine of justification.”

Methodists joined the agreement in 2006 during a World Methodist Council meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

Representatives from all three traditions will be celebrating at Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago while a second celebration is scheduled to take place on the actual anniversary date in Germany, where the joint declaration was signed.

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The head teacher of the country’s leading independent school has criticised the country’s faith schools, arguing that they are “divisive” and fail to teach respect for other faiths.

Dr Martin Stephen, High Master of St Paul’s, itself a school with a Christian foundation, said that faith schools were too often “founded on fear”.

He was speaking on the eve of today’s annual John Colet Day service at St Paul’s in London. The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams is to preach this year to mark the 500th anniversary of the founding of the school by John Colet, Dean of St Paul’s, in 1509. Colet, an early Christian humanist, founded the school with the aim of giving a free education to as many boys as possible.

Dr Stephen was immediately condemned as “dangerous” by the Bishop of London, the Right Rev Richard Chartres, whose diocese includes the cathedral and who lives in the old deanery.

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