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This is the text of a keynote lecture delivered by His Holiness Catholicos Aram I at an ecumenical consultation, organized by the World Council of Churches, together with Secretaries of Christian World Communions 18-20 October 2008, Geneva, Switzerland.

The present document is the result of a study process started in response to strong suggestions made during the 2002 meeting of the WCC Central Committee to the three staff teams on Faith & Order, Interreligious Relations, Mission & Evangelism and their respective commissions or advisory bodies. The question of the theological approach to religious plurality had been on the agenda of the WCC many times, reaching some consensus in 1989 and in 1990. In recent years, it was felt that a new approach to this difficult and controversial issue was needed.

Study document adopted by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME), 2000. Published in: IRMJan/April 1999, pp.109-127.

I have been asked to share in this Conference, on the eve of Pentecost, some experiences and reflections of a participant in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) of the World Council of Churches.

I will do this with regards to:

Whether and how our current discourse on and quest for reconciliation in many societies around the world can be related to the situation in Palestine-Israel. As well as an interpretation of the ministry of the EAPPI in the light of concerns for reconciliation.

The presentation by the Rev. Dr Pepine Iosua focuses on how people in Kiribati understand and struggle with the impacts of climate change, especially "sea rise", on the pacific understanding of the creation understanding, and what the reconciling and healing mission of God to these people and to the world at large is.

Version adopted by the CWME Commission (edited 19 May 2005)

There have been references and echoes of the theme of reconciliation in the theological discussion of mission throughout the previous century, but it is only in the last decade and a half that it has emerged as an important way of talking about Christian mission. David Bosch's 1992 magisterial work, Transforming Mission, makes no mention of it. Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder's recent book, Constants in Context published in 2004, on the other hand, has multiple references to reconciliation. What has happened?

As the representatives of the youth of the Christian community all around the world we now deliver you a message and urge you to listen.

How old was Jesus when he first delivered His message? According to the WCC standards He would have been considered a youth. He would have been placed into a special category, offered a pre-conference and have a lovely misspelled T-Shirt.

Diseases such as AIDS today, or leprosy in earlier times, push those suffering from them to the margins of society - or keep them within society, provided there is some guarantee that everyone else will be safe. These diseases are of such nightmarish proportions that this social logic seems well-founded. So of course it sounds like sheer absurdity when we hear the witness of the monasticism of the Egyptian desert (ca. 5th c.). Abba Agathon, we are told, was aflame with such love that he wanted to find a leper and exchange his own body for that of the leper!

I was born into a Christian home, the daughter and granddaughter of Pentecostal pastors. I was brought up and educated with love and devotion, being the youngest child with two older brothers.

From childhood I was given instruction on the Christian way and learned to love Jesus. When I came to an understanding of the plan of salvation, I was baptized and received the gift of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues.