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Rev. Dr Walter Jacob Hollenweger, a long-time professor of intercultural mission theology at Birmingham University in the UK and prolific author on the nature of the Pentecostal movement, died on 10 August in Krattigen, Switzerland.

Rev. Dr Hielke Wolters is leaving the WCC after serving for nine years - the last seven years as associate general secretary - but he is not leaving the ecumenical movement to which he has been dedicated since his student days. Officially is he going to retire, but only on the paper. He has many thoughts and plans to realize as he moves back to the Netherlands to serve, in one way or another, the church or the wider ecumenical movement. Wolters said to WCC News with a smile: “I’m open for any suggestion and I know that God will lead me in the right direction when that time comes.”

In a message to its Buddhist partners, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit offered greetings on the day of Vesakh, which celebrates the founder of the faith, Siddhartha Gautama.

Almost forty years after the advent of HIV and AIDS, people around the world living with HIV still endure assaults on their dignity and basic human rights—from stigma and discrimination to denial of legal protection and even medical care.

A small diaspora congregation of the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church observed the Joint Ecumenical Sunday of the Communion of Churches in India (CCI) in Geneva on 24 January.

The Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe and the WCC have published a revised and updated edition of their joint study, Mapping Migration: Mapping Churches’ Responses in Europe. The 2016 text explores challenges and changes in the European church landscape in light of international migration.

At the start of a new year of work at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, respected German theologian Jürgen Moltmann led a day-long series of presentations and discussions as a guest of the WCC on Wednesday, 13 January. He also responded to comments and questions on his new book, The Living God and the Fullness of Life (WCC Publications, 2016).

Edward Dommen has been honoured for writing A Peaceable Economy, his 2014 book on the potential for peacemaking through economics. The work appears in the Voices and Visions series of WCC Publications, the World Council of Churches book publishing programme.

In the midst of a mounting climate of fear of refugees and immigrants, the WCC is calling on Christians to be true to the Biblical imperative to “welcome the stranger”.

Commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 was to have been the principal focus of the service of Sunday morning prayer on 15 November in the cathedral church of Saint-Pierre at the summit of Geneva’s old town. Following terror attacks in Beirut and Paris killing and wounding hundreds of civilians over the preceding days, the prayers of the Protestant Church of Geneva and the WCC Executive Committee took on a new dimension.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity has been globally celebrated this year with prayers, reflections, ecumenical services and events focusing on Paul’s question in Corinthians 1 “Has Christ been divided?” a theme for this year’s prayer materials, prepared by the Canadian churches.