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The story starts with Peter. Not biblical Peter, just a kid named Peter who's a little bit overweight, who has bumps on his face, and, oh, yeah – sometimes, he doesn't smell very good.

Fourteen-year old Gudiya Putul is not in Kingston, Jamaica attending the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC), but her name and history were brought to the attention of some IEPC participants Saturday during a workshop about economic injustice and human trafficking.

When Archbishop Valentine Mokiwa visited a gold mining operation in Tanzania, he came across something he never expected to see: a world-class runway and sprawling houses with private swimming pools.

Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Australia, is home to more than 11,000 people, whose very existence, which at one time was tied to the ocean and its bounty, is now threatened by rising ocean water levels.

The “dignity of work” or “decent work” in the context of a values-based response to globalization was at the core of a recent international inter-religious seminar hosted by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC).

The Chernobyl disaster of 25 years ago remains a human and environmental tragedy so severe the consequences will continue for centuries. Its anniversary this week is especially timely given the current emergency in Japan which echoes some of Chernobyl’s hard lessons. To learn them would honour those who suffer from the past and could save lives in the future.

By Marcelo Schneider (*)

As churches worldwide prepare for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) in Jamaica in May, the latest edition of the World Council of Churches (WCC) quarterly journal, Ecumenical Review, will focus on challenges of peacemaking in places as varied as the Middle East and Africa.

The Cancun Agreement, adopted by the vast majority of parties at the United Nations climate change conference (COP16) in the early morning hours of 11 December, gives guarded hope to churches and civil society groups who had called for decisive action by the world's governments. In an improvement on the process that led to the much-criticized Copenhagen Accord last year, the president of the conference managed to keep the climate negotiations in the multilateral track and make some, although insufficient, steps forward.

In a statement to the high-level segment plenary of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, a delegation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) has criticized the lack of action during the last decade.

A consultation on Poverty, Wealth and Ecology in Europe organized by the Conference of European Churches (CEC) and the World Council of Churches (WCC) in cooperation with churches in Hungary ended on Friday 12 November by adopting a "Budapest Call for Climate Justice".

People around the globe are called to put their names and faces behind the call for strong international action on climate change. An international coalition of Christian organizations is organizing a photo petition that will bring the messages of all those who care for creation to the United Nations climate talks.

At the 50th meeting since its foundation in 1946, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) decided to refocus, establishing four thematic working groups, in order better to respond to the needs of the member churches.

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, wrote today in a letter to UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon that "without significant transformations in global economic frameworks the attainment of the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) by 2015 is endangered.”

A common word on international economic practices has been spoken by representatives of Christian and Buddhist traditions who met in late August at Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

In a message honouring the Day for Creation, 1 September, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has expressed his hope that the financial and economic crisis experienced by many societies would bring about "a powerful change in direction, to a path of viable and sustainable environmental development."

The wholeness of creation and the commitment for justice are two biblical insights that have guided ecumenical concern on climate change, say the editors of the latest issue of The Ecumenical Review, published under the title, "Churches Caring for Creation and Climate Justice".

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has called on world leaders to put impoverished people first, instead of making priorities of big banks and military expenditure.

How Christians living in a rich society deal with the concern for the poor was one of the subjects discussed by participants at a German church convention (Kirchentag) celebrated in Munich, from 12-16 May.