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In Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Africa, churches have played a major role in reconciliation between groups who had been in violent conflict with each other for decades. Two international ecumenical teams sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) will visit the three countries during the next two weeks.

Despite having a constitution which does not allow discrimination and a proactive government working for the integration of the marginalized parts of society, violence and discrimination persist in some parts of India.

Joint release with the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Council for World Mission

The legacies of the slave trade, and how churches can respond to past and present forms of slavery, are going to be discussed at an ecumenical conference to be held 10-14 December in Runaway Bay, Jamaica. About sixty theologians, church leaders, social scientists and activists, mainly from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean will gather in the country where nearly one million Africans and later indentured servants from Asia were exploited as human commodities and many more transited on their often deadly passage into slavery.

"Robert Bilheimer is well remembered within the WCC as one of the imaginative individuals whose faithful and creative spirit shaped the movement and actions of the Council in its early stage of development," wrote WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia to Mrs Dorothy Bilheimer on 18 January 2007.

Writing to Mrs Adelheid Kistner on 5 December, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia characterized her husband, South African pastor Dr Wolfram Kistner, as "a tireless champion for justice, equality and human dignity for all," and "one of the clearest voices, articulating biblically and theologically why we as Christians had to support the struggle against apartheid".

"… an extraordinary woman who lived an extraordinary life during an extraordinary time" is how World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, describes Coretta Scott King in a tribute sent today to member churches in the USA. The widow of the US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, died yesterday, 31 January, at the age of 78.

With two months remaining until the World Council of Churches' 9th Assembly in 2006, the organizers have launched an invitation to churches and Christians everywhere to accompany and support the event.

Free photo available, see below

Hook up now to a major ecumenical happening, due to start in just three months!

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Full text of WCC public statements available, see below

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In 2005, for the second year running, churches representing over 560 million Christians world-wide are being invited to mark the UN International Day of Peace, 21 September, as an International Day of Prayer for Peace.

Grace and peace to you on this Feast of Pentecost 2005, in which we celebrate the many gifts of God's Spirit!

<span style="font-weight: bold; "» Orthodox pre-Assembly meeting

Free photos available, see below

> Samuel Kobia to Canada

By Nick Kerr (*)