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On 9 December, during a COP28 side event titled "Faith communities & resilient frontliners responding to the nexus of food-water-climate change,” 12-year-old Faith Sebwa had a clear message to the world. 

World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca congratulated the Baptist Church in the Bengal region on 225 years.

During a 26 June service, participants from all over the world celebrated the 127th anniversary of the World Student Christian Federation in an 18th-century baroque church, Sophienkirche in Berlin, Germany.

A webinar on 1 March—Zero Discrimination Day—will explore the theme “COVID-19, Casteism and Caste discrimination: How to mitigate pandemic-reinforced inequality and discrimination.”

Rev. Dr Santanu Kumar Patro, registrar of the Senate of Serampore College (University), passed away on 5 May in Calcutta. The news of his death was met with outpourings of grief and gratefulness from students, faculty and friends of seminaries and institutions responsible for theological education in South Asia and beyond.

Faith-based and civill groups from around the world are amplifying their call for the UN to more formally recognize the tie between climate change and human rights. A webinar on 26 March convened by the Geneva Interfaith Forum on Climate Change, Environment and Human Rights, reiterated the need for a new position within the UN: a special rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights.

The legacy of sexual slavery before, during and after the brutal Korean War weighs heavily on the shoulders of the thousands of Korean women who lived for decades under a brutal militarized patriarchy.

One of the foundational moments in the modern ecumenical movement is an encyclical letter issued 100 years ago by the Ecumenical Patriarchate on 1 January 1920. As its opening words state, it was addressed “Unto the Churches of Christ everywhere” and sent as a letter to the leaders of key Christian churches. Its first words are an appeal to “Love one another earnestly from the heart,” quoting from 1 Peter 1:22. The thrust of the letter is the suggestion that doctrinal differences among Christian churches do not, or at least should not, prevent “rapprochement” between Christians.

As major challenges for the global economy are predicted in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, a diverse group of faith institutions is putting the call for a just economic recovery into practice.

More than 40 church leaders and diakonia specialists from 15 Asian countries participated in training in ecumenical diakonia and development organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Chiang Mai, Thailand from 4-7 December.

“Our churches are directly involved in upholding the dignity and rights of people and communities in Asia irrespective of their religious or faith identities”, said Matthews George Chunakara, general secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia, at the opening of the annual meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace Reference Group, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, on 4 March.

When the Asia Ecumenical Youth Assembly (AEYA) kicked off in Manado, Indonesia on the 6 April, it was the first such gathering in 34 years. More than 350 youth from 23 countries across Asia came together to address pertinent issues in today’s globalized world.

The World Council of Churches' (WCC) popular YATRA (Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity) programme has a new online learning component that adds four weeks of intensive training to two weeks of residential learning. When 35 young men and women from 14 different countries meet at the Jakarta Theological Seminary in Indonesia on 8 July, they will already have a familiarity with the major religious traditions found in Asia, thanks to their online studies.

To promote strong measures against climate change, the WCC and the Geneva Interfaith Forum on Climate Change, Environment and Human Rights organized a side event to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

In South Asia, where conflicts are often fueled by religion, a WCC conference stressed the role of Christians and Hindus as eminent stakeholders in their common search for justice and peace – beyond majority and minority politics.