1507 - Future German reformer Martin Luther, at age 21, was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic church.

1541 - Spanish ecclesiastic reformer and mystic Ignatius Loyola, 50, was elected the first General of the Jesuit Order, which he had helped establish the previous year.



1687 - James II issued a Declaration of Indulgence allowing full liberty of worship in England. The document allowed peaceable meetings of nonconformists and forgave all penalties for ecclesiastical offenses.



1944 - German Holocaust victim Anne Frank, 14, wrote in her diary: 'I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift...of expressing all that is in me.'



1965 - German theologian Jurgen Moltmann revealed in a letter to Karl Barth: 'Polemics always makes one a little one-sided.'

© 1987-2012, William D. Blake. Used by permission of the author, from

Almanac of the Christian Church