As a group of three laureates of the “National Human Rights Award in Colombia” engaged in meetings with diplomats and United Nations representatives in Geneva, a tray lunch event was organized on 8 June at the Ecumenical Centre by the World Council of Churches and ACT Alliance to offer the delegation the opportunity to share about the deterioration of the peace process in the country and the importance of international solidarity.
Registrations are open for a World Council of Churches webinar on 19 January that will launch the first volume of a major new history of ecumenism produced by a team of academics and scholars coordinated by the Italian-based Foundation for Religious Studies(FSCIRE).
At a 23 September webinar commemorating 90 years since the entry of Dietrich Bonhoeffer into the ecumenical movement and its witness for peace, speakers reflected on how Bonhoeffer’s wisdom has withstood the test of time and still illuminates the ecumenical movement today.
Media and communicators are invited to an online “press club” event during which they can speak candidly on the theme “Digital instruments – Blessing or Curse?”
In a 13 July letter to the United Nations Security Council, the Diálogo Intereclesial por la Paz en Colombia (DiPaz), an interchurch platform for dialogue for peace in Colombia, called on the international community to urge the Colombian government to resume the full implementation of the peace agreement and strengthen channels of dialogue to resolve societal issues.
The same week Brazil reached half a million deaths by COVID-19, my parents got the first dose of the vaccine. On my way to work, I pass through a vaccination post full of people, and through a cemetery full of grief. The past year and few months were a mix of fear, indignation and anger for me. But also a time where I saw generosity and hope bloom.
476 million indigenous people live around the world, of which 11.5% live in our Latin American region. In these years that we are going from the COVID 19 pandemic in our territories (indigenous or tribal at the Latin American level), the presence of many extractive companies, mainly uranium and lithium, has increased, land traffickers and among other monoculture companies with fires for the cultivation of oil palm, logging, putting vulnerable peoples at greater risk than what is already experienced.
As the Ecumenical Fraternity Campaign begins in Brazil, World Council of Churches interim general secretary Rev. Dr Ioan Sauca shared his hope that the campaign will bring a unique opportunity to express concrete solidarity and support to the work of churches engaged in expressing Christian unity.
In a first-ever online visit to the World Council of Churches (WCC), members of the Focolare Movement gathered on 14 January in place of what, until COVID-19 prevented it, has annually been a joyful in-person gathering.
The brutal killing of Joao Alberto Silveira Freitas, 40, a black man, at the hands of two white security guards outside a supermarket in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on 19 November, the eve of National Black Consciousness Day, has sparked outrage across the country. World Council of Churches (WCC) member churches raised their voices to condemn the killing and to express deep concern regarding systemic racial injustice in Brazil.
A new report and resource kit to address hateful content online has been published by WACC Europe, the European region of the World Association for Christian Communication.
As of 4 May 2020, the WCC Annual Review 2019 is available for download online. The annual review records many of the WCC’s activities undertaken in 2019 and continuing into 2020.
Seventy-five years ago, on 9 April 1945, the German Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with six other members of the conspiracy to overthrow Adolf Hitler, was hanged at Flossenbürg execution camp in Germany. He was 39.
In an online prayer service on 1 April, the World Council of Churches (WCC) bid an official farewell to its outgoing general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, who will take a new role as presiding bishop of the Church of Norway.
Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), received former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, at the Ecumenical Centre on 6 March, in Geneva, Switzerland.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has just published two new Bible studies penned by authors from Colombia. Both focus on aspects of the WCC Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.
On 30 January, the Church Council of the Church of Norway appointed World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit as the new presiding bishop for the Church of Norway.
Bishop Petra Bosse-Huber, from the Evangelical Church in Germany, is also a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Executive Committee. WCC Communication spoke to her about preparations for the WCC 11th Assembly, to be held in 2021 in Karlsruhe, Germany.
Rev. Dr Martin Robra has been a key contributor to the ecumenical movement for the last 25 years, working for the World Council of Churches (WCC).
Robra is a theologian and ordained pastor who served as programme executive for the WCC for Ecumenical Continuing Formation, Roman Catholic relations, the joint inter-faith project with the International Labour Organisation Advancing Peace through social justice and support for the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.
WCC Communication asked Robra to reflect on his years of service to the WCC fellowship.
Thirty years ago, on 9 November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig had gained a reputation as a gathering point for events signalling the end of an era of communist rule in what was then East Germany.