<P> More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869 . </P> <P> On 15 March 1517, the Fifth Council of the Lateran closed its activities with a number of reform proposals (on the selection of bishops, taxation, censorship and preaching) but not on the major problems that confronted the Church in Germany and other parts of Europe . A few months later, on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther issued his 95 Theses in Wittenberg . </P> <P> Luther's position on ecumenical councils shifted over time, but in 1520 he appealed to the German princes to oppose the papal Church, if necessary with a council in Germany, open and free of the Papacy . After the Pope condemned in Exsurge Domine fifty - two of Luther's theses as heresy, German opinion considered a council the best method to reconcile existing differences . German Catholics, diminished in number, hoped for a council to clarify matters . </P> <P> It took a generation for the council to materialise, partly because of papal reluctance, given that a Lutheran demand was the exclusion of the papacy from the Council, and partly because of ongoing political rivalries between France and Germany and the Turkish dangers in the Mediterranean . Under Pope Clement VII (1523--34), troops of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Papal Rome in 1527, "raping, killing, burning, stealing, the like had not been seen since the Vandals". Saint Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel were used for horses . This, together with the Pontiff's ambivalence between France and Germany, led to his hesitation . </P>

What was an outcome of the council of trent