Sir, - The Pope's refusal to lift the excommunication on Martin Luther is irrelevant to Protestants, but requires some explanation to Roman Catholics. Rome's lost struggle to cling to the fiction of "the one true Church" may appeal to simple minds) but is nonsense in God's modern world. The history of the Roman establishment and God's gift of the Reformation underlie blazing truths.
The increasingly frail Pope owes a generous concession to himself and his people. It would be a sadness were he to go into history as the Pope who silenced the finest Roman Catholic voice in Christendom this century, Dr Hans Kung - and bore a 500-year-old grudge against Martin Luther. - Yours, etc., Leslie Craven,
Essex, England.