Pope Francis has signaled prior to this that Protestants should be able to receive Holy Communion

On January 10, Pope Francis granted a private audience to Reverend Michael Jonas, pastor of the Lutheran Evangelical Community in Rome. In a subsequent interview with the official website of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), evangelisch.de, Jonas reports on his conversation with the Pope, saying that the Pope “stressed” that “Catholics and Protestants are very close to one another in what they do in their public worship [Gottesdienst].”
He also reported that the Pope then referred to an incident where a Catholic priest helped a Lutheran minister in celebrating a liturgy of the word for his Lutheran community.
This interview with evangelisch.de had sparked interest both in German-speaking and English-speaking outlets.
The minister’s claim that the Pope told him that the Catholic Mass and a Lutheran worship service are very similar is causing a stir in some Catholic circles. The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ is truly present in the Holy Eucharist and that during Mass there takes place an unbloody sacrifice of Our Lord. Lutherans, in general, however, do not believe in the Real Presence of Our Lord, nor in His unbloody sacrifice at Mass. Lutherans also do not pray for the Pope and the bishops of the Catholic Church, nor do they invoke the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mother and of all the saints during their worship ceremony.
LifeSiteNews reached out to Reverend Jonas, asking him for confirmation of this earlier Evangelisch.de interview and for clarification concerning a passage of the evangelisch.de interview which seems to indicate that it was the Pope himself who had once helped out with the public worship of a Lutheran pastor in the north of Europe.
--> READ MORE