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As the World Council of Churches celebrates its 75th anniversary, a series of feature stories from different regions of the world will portray ecumenism at the local level—within churches, communities, and individuals who embody the spirit of ecumenism in unique ways. The feature story below offers a glimpse of some facets of ecumenism present in the Philippines.

Church leaders in the Philippines gathered in an ecumenical memorial service in Manila on 21 September, the 50^th anniversary of the imposition of martial law, to solemnly recall people of faith who were tortured and killed during the brutal regime of president Ferdinand Marcos.

Als die Mitwirkenden an der ersten Vollversammlung des Ökumenischen Rats der Kirchen (ÖRK) im August 1948 in Amsterdam zusammenkamen, zeugten die Niederlande noch von der Gewalt des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Der nahezu vollständig zerstörte Rotterdamer Hafen erstand aus den Ruinen. Viele andere Städte, Gemeinden und Dörfer in ganz Europa mühten sich mit dem Wiederaufbau ab. Östlich von Amsterdam waren Deutschland und Österreich in von den alliierten Streitmächten verwaltete Besatzungszonen aufgeteilt worden. Zwei Monate zuvor hatten die Spannungen zwischen der Sowjetunion und den westlichen Besatzern der ehemaligen deutschen Hauptstadt die Berliner Luftbrücke eingeleitet. Seit 1945 verwendeten Publikationen zunehmend den Begriff „Kalter Krieg“.

As participants in the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) gathered at Amsterdam during August 1948, the Netherlands bore witness to the violence of the Second World War. The port of Rotterdam was rising from near destruction. Many other cities, towns and villages across Europe were struggling to recover. To the east, Germany and Austria were divided into zones of occupation administered by the Allied Powers. Two months earlier, tensions between the Soviet Union and the Western occupiers of the former German capital led to the start of the Berlin Airlift. Since 1945, publications had been increasing their use of the term “Cold War”.