News
Appointed as coordinator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) International Relations team and director of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) by the WCC executive committee in February, Peter Weiderud from Sweden took up his new post on 1 September 2002. Weiderud succeeds Dwain Epps, who retired at the end of August 2002 after three decades of ecumenical ministry in the field of international affairs, including twenty years on the staff of the CCIA.
A journalist by profession, Weiderud was the general secretary of the Christian Peace Movement in Sweden for six years. He next worked at the diocesan level in his church, the Church of Sweden, for five years and then with the Swedish Ecumenical Council on justice and peace concerns, before being named political advisor the the foreign minister of Sweden as speech writer and advisor on security policy. Most recently, Weiderud served as director general for international mission and diaconia in his church. In that role, he coordinated policy on international affairs, and managed the overall work of the Church of Sweden Mission, Church of Sweden Aid, and the international branch of the Swedish Evangelical Mission.
At its meeting in August, the WCC executive committee appointed Juan Carlos Michel from Argentina as WCC Media Relations officer. A journalist with a degree in theology, Juan Michel has been working for his church, the Evangelical Church of the River Plate, since 1987. He began writing for the church's monthly magazine Revista Parroquial, and in 1993 became the magazine's editor. Most recently (from 1999), he assumed responsibility for communication development and media relations in the church, including editorial supervision of its publications. During this time, he also worked as a freelance correspondent for Latin America Press, Lutheran World Information, and for the Latin American and Caribbean Communication Agency.
Michel's efforts to build up a positive image of his church in the media and broaden its communication strategy to draw on grassroots communicators will be a precious asset when he assumes his new task in Geneva on 1 December 2002. He succeeds Karin Achtelstetter from Germany, who served as Media Relations officer from March 1999 to August this year, and left the WCC to take up the post of director of communication for the Lutheran World Federation.