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"Make me a channel of your peace" was the theme for a celebration of common commitment to overcome violence at a gathering of Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant church representatives on 17 February in Wittenberg, Germany.

The international community's responsibility to protect endangered populations when their governments fail to do so - if necessary, by the use of force - and church support for such measures was the subject of a lively debate at a World Council of Churches (WCC) workshop at the 20-25 January World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.

In a message to all the Palestinian people, Jerusalem church leaders alarmed at worsening relations between two main political parties are calling for an end to violence and an urgent return to the "real priorities" of Palestinians. The plan is to work with Jerusalem's top Islamic leaders on a similar Christian-Muslim message as well.

"The cross calls us not to glorify, but to attend to the suffering in the world and to struggle for its elimination," said the participants of a theological consultation on cruelty organized by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The conference took place 5-8 December in Puidoux, Switzerland.

The task of the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) reference group is to guide work on the Decade over the period between now and 2010. Meeting in Geneva in December, the group islooking at preparations for an event that will culminate the Decade in 2011 - an International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) - as well as at plans for the Decade's focus on Europe in 2007.

In a symbolic act of closure of the year that began with the first WCC assembly in Latin America, World Council of Churches central committee moderator Rev. Dr Walter Altmann visited an interactive exhibition on domestic violence in downtown Porto Alegre/Brazil.

What does cruelty have to do with theology? Some 25 theologians from all over the world will gather on 5-8 December in Crêt-Bérard (near Lausanne, Switzerland), to discuss why and to what extent cruelty can be considered as a new theme for theological reflection.

The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) have reacted together to news of the "despicable" assassination on 4 November of Lutheran Church in El Salvador co-pastors Francisco Carillo and his wife Jesús Calzada de Carillo.

An inter-religious seminar on the "spiritual dimensions underlying the crisis in violence" will be part of a 13-15 November public event in Rochester, New York (USA) focusing on violence and the how faith communities can respond to it. Â

A new group of 25 ecumenical accompaniers have just begun three months of working with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). The group includes the first Hindu and the second Muslim to participate in the programme, the former from South Africa and the latter from the UK.

A 10 October World Council of Churches (WCC) pastoral letter to the National Council of Churches and WCC member churches in the Philippines expresses the Council's "deep shock and grief" over the brutal stabbing on 3 October of Philippine Independent Church Bishop Alberto Ramento, and alleges that Philippines government security forces continue "to indulge in victimization, torture and extra judicial killings on the pretext of fighting the terrorist threat in the region" in spite of protests and demonstrations.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) today expressed its continued concern and distress at the ongoing atrocities taking place in the Darfur region of the Sudan.

The central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) has appealed to the United Nations and the African Union to endorse a plan for a sustainable peace process between the government of Uganda and the "Lord's Resistance Army" (LRA).

The main points of focus for the 2007 Decade to Overcome Violence focus on Europe will be migration and working on a theology of a just peace.

The central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) today called on the Government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam to respect the terms and conditions of the 2002 cease-fire agreement, put an immediate end to all hostilities and resume peace negotiations without future delay.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee today condemnedextrajudicial killings in the Philippinesand called onthe government of the Philippines to disband "death squads", private militias and paramilitary forces operating with impunity in the country.

"Praying for peace is an essential part of Christian worship and, indeed, of human existence," says World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia about the International Day of Prayer for Peace, to be celebrated on 21 September 2006.

High-resolution photos available - see below

Entrusted with the mission of expressing global ecumenical solidarity with churches and people affected by the current conflict in the Middle East, a three-member ecumenical pastoral delegation composed of representatives of the Conference of European Churches (CEC), the Catholic Bishops' Conference of France, and the World Council of Churches (WCC) today left Cyprus by boat en route for Beirut.

A joint appeal signed today by the leaders of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) calls "upon Israel and Hezbullah to end the fighting in Lebanon" and "upon the United States, the European Union, and the Arab States to exercise their influence toward this end". It also calls "upon the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas to end the conflict in Gaza".