News
Rainer Lang
While others are talking about their plans for the future, Magdalena Keller finds it hard to say goodbye. For about 17 years - from 1982 to 1999 - she was the director of Casa Locarno. Now this place of many meetings will be closed, and the house high on a hill above Locarno, on the Swiss shore of the Lago Maggiore, will be sold. It was purchased by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and HEKS, the aid agency of the Swiss Protestant Churches, in 1947.
For three days, from 24-26 May 2002, the members of the Casa Locarno association, Casa staff, guests and friends had a farewell party in Locarno-Monti and the neighbouring town of Ascona. There was an evening get-together, a lecture by WCC general secretary Konrad Raiser, moments of celebration and fellowship in the house, during walks together and around the dining table, and an exhibition entitled "Saying farewell in dignity; setting out on new paths with courage".
"Casa Locarno on the road"
The original idea of the Casa as a place for meeting and reconciliation between people, confessions, nations and religions will now live on in a programme called "Casa Locarno on the road". Beginning in 2003, the Casa Locarno concept will be carried on at various meeting and conference centres in central and eastern Europe.
Konrad Raiser expressed his joy that this time of farewell also marked a new beginning. He reminded his listeners that the Casa had been very important to a great many people for many years. "I'm glad the name of the WCC is associated with Casa Locarno," he said, noting that it had been more than just somewhere to go for a rest or a holiday. Far from their hectic lives at home, people had reached out to one another across language, cultural and religious barriers. What the ecumenical movement is about, said Raiser, was lived out here in a concrete, human way.
In his lecture "Overcoming boundaries in Europe", Raiser looked at "the continuing heritage of history". Very few boundaries have not changed in the past 1000 years, he noted. But one - between the eastern and western parts of the old Roman Empire - has become a boundary between different social, political and church structures. Raiser sees overcoming this boundary as the crucial ecumenical task in Europe today. The future "Casa" programme, he feels, can make an important contribution towards Europe's growing together. One thing that is needed, he notes, is to recognize Muslims as an integral part of Europe, and here there is a special role for communication between Christians and Muslims.
Franz Schüle, central secretary of HEKS, introduced the "Casa on the road" concept, designed to operate especially in eastern Europe. A first encounter has already taken place in Poland. Schüle can imagine holding encounters in the Caucasus countries between Orthodox and Lutheran churches, and with Muslims, or in the Romanian border area. But he expects that the topic-oriented meetings recently tried out in Casa Locarno, such as "Women's Casa" or "Youth Casa", will also be continued. Programmes can be organized locally or regionally. Schüle sees this new beginning as "a seeking and an adventure". "Our vision now is the development of a network of Casas, small and large, all over Europe," he says.
With regard to Casa's new mission, Raiser called for new ecumenical supporters. The WCC can serve as the umbrella organization, giving legitimacy to new forms of encounter, he said.
It was hard to say goodbye to Casa Locarno. Yet everyone agreed that so much has changed in Europe in the past half-century that Casa Locarno in its old form has been outgrown.
This is Casa's present director, Susann Künzler's, perspective as well. After the 1989-90 changes in Europe, there were fewer and fewer guests from the West, she reports. Franz Schüle recalls that the Casa was founded in response to post-World War II needs, the human and other kinds of brokenness, and became a place of ecumenical encounter between East and West.
An experience of history
History's course always had a direct effect on Casa Locarno, says Elisabeth Werner, who ran the Casa from 1961 to 1982. The after-effects of the war continued to be felt for a long time. She remembers well the nights she spent at the bedside of a sick guest who had survived a concentration camp. Magdalena Keller also suffered in sympathy with West and East Germans in their difficult and painful encounters at Casa Locarno after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
All this is recorded in the guestbooks where many famous names and signatures, including those of the theologian Karl Barth and the former president of the German Federal Republic, Gustav Heinemann, can be found.
Peter Novak from the Czech Republic stands in the garden and looks wistfully down into the valley. Casa Locarno is an imposing building high above the Lago Maggiore, with a splendid view of Locarno and the opposite shore of the lake. The beauty of the Ticino casts its spell again over 29-year-old Novak, a medical nurse who worked half a year here as a volunteer four years ago after reading about Casa in the Czech Hussite Church newspaper. He still loves the landscape. "It was just so nice," he says simply.
Friendships begun here lasted, according to Hannedore Steger, the Casa housekeeper, who especially enjoyed working with young people. Across language barriers it was often particularly difficult to find ways of communicating, she recalls.
Most of the more recent guests came from eastern Europe - from the Czech and Slovak Republics, from Hungary, Romania or Estonia. The last volunteers to work in the house also come from these countries. For example, 23-year-old Susanna Söld, a pastor's daughter, is from Romania. Her parents were here last year.
Volunteers used to be called the "Casa children". Mieke Korenhof from the Netherlands is one of them. She came here in 1962-63 and is now a theologian in Germany. At a time when people could not travel as much as they now do, there was nowhere else you could meet so many people from different countries and religious milieus in such a short time, she remembers. At the Casa, she experienced the growing together of the ecumenical movement, and made many friends. Forty years later, "It's a place to carry in your heart" she says.
Rainer Lang is a communication officer for Action by Churches Together (ACT) International.
Photos to accompany the Feature are to be found on the WCC web site: www.photooikoumene.org/events/events.html