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An Ecumenical Week promoted by the Focolare Movement is being held 9-13 May at Castel Gandolfo, Rome. Some 700 Christians from 70 churches and ecclesial communities are participating in the meeting, which is titled “Walking together. Christians on the road to unity.”
In a greeting to the conference participants, World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit noted that the theme of the Focolare conference resonates well with the framework for WCC’s current work, the pilgrimage of justice and peace.
“The unity of the church is meaningless when it is not a sign and a foretaste of the unity of all human kind and creation, of life in its fullness in justice and peace,” stated Tveit.
“To be one is to be in the true God, who is love. Unity means a life in the communion of love and that we are together on our way towards justice and peace as one in the bond of love.”
“The Focolare movement has shared with us the Spirituality of Unity which is focusing on Jesus forsaken. In the shattered image of Christ on the cross, we rediscover the face of the human being that we all were meant to be and are to become on our pilgrimage towards God’s reign. Many of those who were instrumental in the formation of the World Council of Churches declared already in 1925 in Stockholm: The closer we come to the cross of Christ, the closer we come to each other.”
“Walking together. Christians on the road to unity” is the title of the 59th edition of Ecumenical Week which will be held 9-13 May 2017, at the international conference centre in Castel Gandolfo (Rome), with the participation of around 700 Christian representatives of 70 Churches and Ecclesial Communities from 40 countries.
This 59th Ecumenical Week is also meant to manifest the Focolare’s renewed ecumenical commitment, expressed recently in the Ottmaring Declaration, which promises to do all that is possible “so that all our activities, initiatives and meetings, both internationally and locally, will be sustained by this open, brotherly behaviour among Christians, while we entrust to God the hastening of our Churches’ journey towards celebrating in the one chalice”.
Video greeting by Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC
Read the greeting by Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC
“Spirituality of unity” inspires many Focolare follower (WCC press release 12 May, 2017)
