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Encouragement, inspiration and storytelling animated the plenary discussion of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.

Journeying from urban centres and small Pacific islands, mountain ranges and rural towns, more than 170 Indigenous people gathered this week at the mouth of the river that flows from traditional Sami lands. Their conference, “Reconciliation Processes and Indigenous Peoples: Truth, Healing and Transformation,” brought together representatives of more than two dozen Indigenous societies in connection with the WCC Central Committee meetings in Trondheim, Norway.

Knut Refsdal started his pilgrimage from the Norwegian capital Oslo to the historic pilgrim town of Trondheim on 24 May. He is scheduled to arrive on the eve of the opening of the meeting of the WCC Central Committee on 21 June.

His All Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew arrived in Crete on 15 June, pledging to proceed with the Holy and Great Council, the long-planned meeting of Orthodox Churches there.

Experiences of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people around the world will be front and centre at an upcoming international conference in Trondheim, Norway. The Sami Church Council of the Church of Norway and the WCC are the chief organizers behind the conference, “Reconciliation Processes and Indigenous Peoples: Truth, Healing and Transformation,” which will take place from 20-21 June. Coinciding with the National Aboriginal Day of Prayer in Canada, the conference will be held in connection with the WCC Central Committee meeting also taking place in Trondheim from 22-28 June.

You disgust me. - “We value you despite our differences.” I’m scared of you. - “Let’s spend some time together.” Your children cannot come to this school. - “All of our children can play together.” Gathered in prayer and determined to overcome stigma and discrimination, participants in a 7 June interfaith service replaced words of rejection with words of acceptance.

Vibrant opening worship held at Luyanó Presbyterian Reformed Church in Havana, Cuba marked the beginning of the executive committee meeting of the World Communion of Reformed Churches in Havana, Cuba from 7-13 May. The meeting was hosted by the Presbyterian Reformed Church in Cuba, a member church of the WCC.

On the 28th Quadrennial Assembly of the National Council of Churches in India, held in Jabalpur from 27-30 April, Rev. Dr Sang Chang, WCC president for Asia, urged Indian churches to commit themselves afresh to the task of building just and inclusive communities.

The 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 should be a profoundly ecumenical, as well as European and international celebration, according to Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chair of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

Reflecting on the relevance of religion in today’s world, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit spoke at a sustainable development seminar in Rome on 4 May, posing a question to the participants: “Is religion able to bring hope to people of today?”

In the Czech Republic, “HateFree” zones have been established as places for a fair approach toward every person — and expressions of solidarity poured forth from the world this week to help these zones stand strong in the face of vandalism.

“We had heard that racism continues to be an issue in the United States,” said Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the WCC Central Committee. “But we did not expect to find it so deep, so wide and so pervasive.”

The World Council of Churches Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network (WCC-EDAN) will flourish and become a source of increasing education and dialogue, said the programme’s leaders at a meeting in Kenya on 10-15 April.

In the Washington DC region on 18 April, Jim Winkler, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, welcomed a contingent from the WCC who, with others, will be spending 18-25 April on a WCC-sponsored racial justice listening and support visit to several US communities which have suffered violent incidents related to race.

Canadian church leaders issued a joint statement endorsing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and promising to implement its principles. Doreen Spence, an aboriginal Canadian who was one of the architects of the declaration, welcomes the move.

“Racism remains an issue that divides society and even families,” said Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), in a Washington DC workshop on “the theological basis for lifting the voice of the marginalized.” She noted that these dramatically relevant words were not her own, but are drawn from a WCC study on race undertaken in the 1990s.

The Racial Justice Accompaniment Visit to the USA is a continuation of the WCC’s long history of racial justice work. As part of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace, the WCC wishes to listen to and express support for people and churches in the USA, and to encourage the efforts of member churches and ecumenical partners in the US, as well as other justice-seeking movements on these issues.

Future collaborative work of the Roman Catholic Church with the WCC was the focus of the latest meeting of executives of their Joint Working Group in Geneva.

Prayers for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan were offered on 4 April in the chapel of the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland. Joining in the Geneva service of common prayer were staff from ecumenical and other international organizations including the WCC and the LWF.

The Faith and Order Commission’s convergence text “The Church: Towards a Common Vision” continues to be discussed by churches on a journey toward revealing the unity of the church and how it is inextricably bound on a pilgrimage of justice and peace.