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With great sadness, the World Council of Churches (WCC) received news of the demise of Prof. Vuyani Vellem on 4 December. A member of the WCC’s Commission on Ecumenical Education and Formation, Vellem was director of the Centre for Public Theology and associate professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He also served as deputy secretary of the South Africa Council of Churches.

Pan African Women of Faith will gather in Washington, DC from 13-15 November to advocate for global nutrition and to observe the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved African peoples to Jamestown, Virginia (USA).

Pan-African Women of Faith, Bread for the World, the World Council of Churches (WCC), Pan-African Women’s Ecumenical Empowerment Network, Pan-African Diaspora Women’s Association, African Union, and All Africa Conference of Churches have announced plans for a November conference as well as the rollout of a social media campaign aimed at promoting profiles advocating justice and equity.

Kenyan religious leaders, scholars, students and ordinary people have mourned Prof. John Samuel Mbiti, world-renowned Christian philosopher and writer who died on 6 October.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) fellowship joined family and friends of Prof. John Samuel Mbiti in giving thanks for his life and grieving his death on 6 October.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Theological Education programme has, for the second time, contributed to ecumenical capacity development in Morocco. The WCC helped instruct a course on contextual theologies and African theologies at the Ecumenical Theological Institute Al Mowafaqa in Rabat.

Social media was awash with messages of love on Valentine’s Day, but from Thursdays in Black supporters, the flowers came with strong messages that love is not violent.

The life of Rev. Dr Rena Joyce Weller Karefa-Smart is being remembered and commended this week by the WCC fellowship after her passing last week. Karefa-Smart was the first Pan African woman to graduate in 1945 from Yale Divinity School. She was a champion for global ecumenism over the course of a long and distinguished career. An attendee of the first WCC Assembly, she was also a procession leader and author of the liturgies at the second WCC Assembly in Evanston, Illinois (USA).

Speaking in Lviv, Ukraine on 30 August, World Council of Churches (WCC) deputy general secretary Prof. Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri presented a paper on ”Women and Ecumenical Engagement for Peace in South Sudan,” reflecting on the experiences of a Pilgrim Team visit by the WCC in May 2018.

If the human spirit and likeness of God's will for peace with justice for all people is alive in the world, the pilgrim team that visited South Sudan this week has witnessed it. From 5-9 May, a World Council of Churches “Pilgrim Team” visited South Sudan under the theme “African Women of Faith and Gender Justice.” The delegation was hosted by the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC).

Participants at the Africa Pre-Conference of the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism, arrived in black clothing on 14 September to act in solidarity with the worldwide “Thursdays in Black" campaign.

With the aim of building competency in economics within churches, the second Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and Management for an Economy of Life (GEM School) was held from 21 August - 1 September in Lusaka, Zambia.

Reconciliation was once primarily seen as a message of the church but is now used by secular leaders trying to establish peace in communities torn by conflict and war, the WCC president for Africa, the Rev. Mary Anne Plaatjies van Huffel, has said at a major Protestant gathering in Germany.

The first ever WCC Eco-School on Water, Food and Climate Justice will be held 24 July to 3 August, hosted by the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian Blantyre Synod. Applications are now open with a deadline of 11 June (deadline extended).