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Dear sisters and brothers,
It is with real sadness that I greet you today on behalf of the World Council of Churches and its over 350 member churches with about 580 million Christians and our many ecumenical partners around the world, to convey both our grief at the loss of our sister Dr Agnes Abuom and our gratitude to God for allowing us to know and work with her over the past decades, and especially in the past eight years when she served as moderator of the WCC until September 2022.
I greet you with the words of the Psalmist: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones.” (Ps. 115:16)
Dr Agnes sought to live her ecumenical commitment through a lifetime of dedicated service. We at the World Council of Churches in particular have so benefited at every level from her decades of ecumenical engagement. From her early work with refugees and migrants; to her pan-African church service; from her longstanding commitment to global health and the battle against HIV and AIDS; from her championing the rights of women to her leadership of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace; from her determination as moderator to reframe our understandings of diakonia and of human sexuality; to the irenic ways in which she implemented our move to consensus-style decision making—Dr Agnes was a peace pilgrim first to last.
But of course she not only shaped the movement she served, she broadened its reach and efficacy. By combining her deep Christian faith with fierce determination for social justice and a disarming, inclusive style, Dr Agnes was able to effect change even beyond the churches. Her developmental and peacemaking work transcended the institutional fellowship to encompass the many other churches, peace organizations, the United Nations and NGOs, and political groups with which she worked for justice and peace over her long career. A true African but also a citizen of the world, Agnes showed us how Christian engagement, marked by love, can yield global, transformational change.
The news of her death has brought home just how vital her life and work have been in the ecumenical movement and in the worldwide quest for racial harmony, gender justice, church engagement, and international peace.
Inspired and empowered as we are by Agnes’s life and death, we are firmly convinced of the power of the churches, ecumenically united in Christian love, to rescue our imperiled world and advance toward God’s promised future of justice and peace.
I think we can also say quite affirmatively that Agnes was the most beloved of ecumenical leaders in this last generation, and we have ourselves received hundreds of messages of condolences from her friends, colleagues, staff, and acquaintances. So many people find in her death the personal loss of an “ecumenical mother,” or “ecumenical grandmother.”
She was also a woman of prayer, a deeply spiritual person. In that spirit, we join our prayers as a worldwide fellowship of Christians knowing that Agnes, our dear sister in Christ, finds her eternal rest and great joy in the welcoming arms of God, the mother and father of each and all of us.
May the presence and power of the Holy Spirit bring comfort, counsel, peace, love, strength and hope to Dr Agnes’s family, friends, church, and all those who knew and loved her in the WCC and beyond. May God’s grace be sufficient for the family and all of us during this time of separation and loss and in the days to come. May the peace of God that passes all understanding guide and guard your hearts and lives both now and forever. Blessings and peace.
Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay
General Secretary
World Council of Churches
