“We must see the decisive point here: more than anyone before him in the fifteen hundred years of church history, Luther had found a direct existential access to the apostle Paul’s doctrine of justification of the sinner by faith alone, and not through works. This had been completely distorted by the promotion of indulgences in the Catholic Church, which claimed that the sinner could be saved by performing set penances and even making payment of money. This rediscovery of Paul’s message of justification – among the shifts, obscurities, cover-ups, and overpaintings – is an epoch-making and astounding theological achievement, which the Reformer himself always recognized as the special grace of God. Simply in the light of this central point, a formal rehabilitation of Luther and the repeal of his excommunication by Rome is overdue. It is one of those acts of reparation which should follow the pope’s confession of guilt today.”

Küng, Hans. The Catholic Church: a Short History. New York: The Modern Library, 2003, p. 126