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Rev. Martina Viktorie Kopecka, a priest in the Czechoslovak Hussite Church, is moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) ECHOS Commission for young people. She also serves on the WCC executive and central committees. In February, she was named a goodwill ambassador by H. E. Tomáš Petříček, minister of foreign affairs of the Czech Republic, a role she will serve for one year. Below, she reflects on her hopes and plans for sharing stories from the Czech Republic with the world, bridging divides in her home country, and, ultimately, bringing about new expressions of Christian love.

Rev. Dr Antti Laine is senior advisor for Theology and Ecumenical Relations with Finn Church Aid. He reflects below on how, while the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated gender-based violence, faith-based and humanitarian groups, can provide hope—especially when they work together.

The Right Reverend Dr Christopher Cocksworth is Bishop of Coventry, the senior leader of the Church of England in Coventry and Warwickshire in the United Kingdom. On 14 November 2020, Bishop Cocksworth, along with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York as well as more than 30 other bishops, issued a statement welcoming the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and calling on the UK Government to join it. The statement coincided with the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry and destruction of its cathedral.

Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, chair of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, and Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop in Munich and former president of the German Bishops’ Conference, were awarded the 2020 Augsburg Peace Prize for their “unconditional will to live together in peace.”

Rev. Eva Guldanova is a Lutheran minister, ecumenical theologian, and assistant to the general secretary of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Slovakia. This interview is part of a series dedicated to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

This interview with Fr Manuel Barrios Prieto, secretary general of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE), is the first one in a series dedicated to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Mikael Stjernberg is public relations manager for the Christian Council of Sweden, which visited Malta in October to meet with churches and organizations to hear how they worked to produce the material for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and to see how they work with refugees.

Our series of interviews with Thursdays in Black ambassadors highlights those who are playing a vital role in increasing the impact of our collective call for a world without rape and violence. Jouni Hemberg is executive director of Finn Church Aid.

The visit 9-10 February 2017 to the World Council of Churches by the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, H.H. Abune Matthias, occasioned reflection on the distinctive history and traditions of that ancient church, as well as its role in Ethiopian society and in the larger ecumenical landscape. Coming to his work from a lifetime of service in the church and its monasteries and schools during an especially turbulent time, Abune Matthias was elected in 2013. The church numbers about 50 million members, including several million outside Ethiopia itself, where it accounts for about half the population. What follows is a brief interview with the Patriarch.