Decet Romanum Pontificem
There are at least two other important papal bulls with the title : one dated February 23, 1596, issued by Pope Clement VIII, and one dated March 12, 1622, issued by Pope Gregory XV. Toward the end of the 20th century, Lutherans in dialogue with the Catholic Church requested the lifting of this excommunication, but the Roman Curia responded that its practice is to lift excommunications only on those still living. Roland Bainton, in ""Here I Stand" after a Quarter of a Century", his preface for the 1978 edition of his Luther biography, concluded: "I am happy that  the Church of Rome has allowed some talk of removing the excommunication of Luther. This might well be done. He was never a heretic. He might better be called, as one has phrased it, 'a reluctant rebel.'" Luther's rehabilitation has been denied, however, by the Vatican: "Rumors that the Vatican is set to rehabilitate Martin Luther, the 16th-century leader of the Protestant Reformation, are groundless," said the Vatican spokesman, the Jesuit Federico Lombardi in 2008.