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He earned the title “Green Patriarch” as a religious leader addressing alarming environmental issues over at least two decades. In 2008, Time Magazine named His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as one of 100 Most Influential People in the World, for “defining environmentalism as spiritual responsibility”.

“What happens when we journey on a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage of justice and peace, with people who share our values but who may or may not accept the institution of the church? And what does it mean to be on a pilgrimage of justice and peace, when the next generation shares our concerns for justice and peace, and want to follow God, but do not share our spirituality as confined by church and by tradition?”

"We worship in different languages and cultures, yet all one in Christ. This is an immensely enriching experience,” said Dr Jude Long, principal of Nungalinya College, in Darwin, Australia, as she explored spirituality with indigenous people from across the world this week.

The WCC Ecumenical Water Network is inviting member churches and supporters to reflect on water during Lent. For many in the world, water is either taken for granted or in desperately short supply.

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.

A special service organized by the WCC at the Ecumenical Centre chapel in Geneva, Switzerland, dedicated prayers to the United Nations post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, meant to eliminate extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and tackle climate change and water scarcity by 2030.

As an ecumenical delegation to Japan participates in Hiroshima Day observances on the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing, the WCC has published a liturgical resource and invites churches around the world to join in prayer.

Meeting from 17 to 24 June, the newly reconstituted Commission on Faith and Order of the WCC has begun to define its principal trajectories for ecumenical study and common activity from 2015 until the next WCC Assembly in 2020.

Christians need a "spirituality of resistance" to face oppression, violence and experiences of defeat, the WCC general secretary said in an address at Germany’s biggest Protestant gathering.

This Lenten season, the WCC invites its member churches to pray on Sunday 29 March for those affected by wars in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt. The season of prayer is meant to revive hope from hopelessness, taking into account the vulnerability of minority communities and the threat of losing the diversity of the social fabric in this region.

An ecumenical network in Latin America of composers, liturgists and writers plan to develop liturgical resources based on the WCC pilgrimage of justice and peace initiative.