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Berlin. Former United States president Barack Obama joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in front of tens of thousands of people on 25 May, the first full day of Germany’s biggest Protestant gathering, the Kirchentag, or “church festival”.

As more people face famine today than any time in modern history, the WCC together with the All Africa Conference of Churches and a range of faith-based partners and networks invite a Global Day of Prayer to End Famine on 21 May 2017, in response to the hunger crisis.

“What is the role of churches in peace-building? How are they actually involved? Which are the ecumenical challenges, and especially which are the ecumenical opportunities that arise from joint efforts at peace building?” These were some of the questions on the table as the Executive of the Joint Working Group of the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church met in Dublin, Ireland on 24-26 April.

A key moment of transition in the life of the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA) took place on 27-29 January in Stavanger, Norway as longstanding leader Dr Johnson Mbillah handed the role of general advisor over to his successor, Dr Joseph Mutei.

As another academic term is coming to an end at the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, 35 international students and faculty have visited the Vatican in Rome, to celebrate the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, engage in ecumenical dialogue, and to learn more about a variety of churches’ work towards Christian unity.

An interreligious consultation on “Voices of Hope for a New Era” has called for enhanced collaboration between Buddhists and Christians in a spirit of humility and honesty and in service of a shared humanity.

Following a 6-November ceremony where recently retired Very Rev. Dr Sheilagh Kesting was “knighted”, as Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Francis, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit now extends congratulations to Kesting, a long-standing colleague and ecumenist from the Church of Scotland.

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has hailed a joint commemoration by Catholics and Lutherans of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation as a major advance in dialogue between Christian traditions.

The Association Internationale pour l’ Education Sociale Chretienne (AIESC), or International Association for Social Christian Teaching, held its 30th anniversary meeting at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece from 2-3 September.

The globalization of the world economy has not been an even process, and in many ways governance for the protection of capital has overtaken governance for the protection of human well-being. A recent Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and Management for an Economy of Life addressed this very asymmetry.

“As Christians, we have hope. We believe God does not abandon creation and that we ourselves can become beacons of that hope by sowing the seeds of a different future”, said Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, in a video message calling upon Christians worldwide to pray together for “God’s beautiful work”.

Land rights, equity in development resource flows and life-enhancing epistemologies were among the themes emphasized by faith-based organizations at the World Social Forum in Montreal, Canada on 9-14 August.

PROCMURA (Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa), an ecumenical Christian organization that focuses on strengthening Christian-Muslim relations at all levels, dedicated a new central office and conference centre on 2 July in Nairobi, Kenya.

“We had heard that racism continues to be an issue in the United States,” said Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the WCC Central Committee. “But we did not expect to find it so deep, so wide and so pervasive.”

The Anglican Communion needs to be “aware of the great crises of our times,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has said in a presidential address to members of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Lusaka, Zambia.