The date chosen for representatives of the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation to sign their Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was October 31 1999.
This was Reformation Day for Lutherans and other Protestants, the 482nd anniversary of Luther's posting of the 95 theses. The place chosen was Augsburg in Germany, the site where the first major confessional document of the Reformation, the Augsburg Confession, was ratified in 1530.
To great ceremony and fanfare, over 700 dignitaries proceeded from a Catholic church to a Lutheran church, where, with some 2,000 people watching on video screens outside, ten representatives of both traditions signed the document.
