At a luncheon at the Anglican Centre in Rome on 25 May 2021, MEOR director Matthew A. Laferty shared about John Wesley’s spiritual experience at Aldersgate Street on 24 May 1738 with H.Em. Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Wesley, the founder of the Methodist revival, reluctantly attended a Moravian prayer meeting on 24 May 1738 at Aldersgate Street in London. As he heard a reading from Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans, he felt his “heart strangely warmed.” Wesley wrote in his journal that at about 8:45 p.m. “while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”
Methodist Ecumenical Office Rome 