section_path: Catholic reform/Beginnings
section_name: Beginnings
paragraph_text: Beginnings
  
  The religious upheaval in Germany and the sack of Rome convinced many Catholics that their Church was in need of a profound reform. Pope Paul III (r. 1534–1549) appointed prominent representatives of the Catholic reform movement as cardinals, among them Contarini, Reginald Pole (d. 1558), and Giovanni Pietro Caraffa (d. 1559). They completed a report condemning the corruption of church administration and the waste of church revenues. Contarini, Pole and other Spirituali were ready to make concessions to the Protestants but their liberalism shocked Caraffa and other conservative prelates.
  
  Negotiations between moderate Catholic and Protestant theologians were not unusual. In 1541, Bucer and the Catholic theologian Johann Gropper (d. 1559) drafted a compromise formula on justification. The draft was discussed along with other issues at a colloquy during the Diet of Regensburg but no compromise was reached, not least due to opposition by both Luther and the Holy See. Contarini, who represented the papacy at the Diet, died in 1541; many Spirituali such as Vermigli fled from Italy to avoid persecution. Hermann of Wied, Archbishop-elector of Cologne (r. 1515–1546) completed a reform program with Bucer's assistance, criticising prayers to the saints and traditional Eucharistic theology, and proposing sermons about justification by faith. The canons of the Cologne Cathedral requested Gropper to write a critical response to it, and achieved Hermann's deposal by the Roman Curia.