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World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay sent warm greetings to Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, who is retiring from his post as bishop but continuing as moderator of the WCC.

From peacebuilding to spiritual life, from children’s rights to planning for the 11th Assembly, the World Council for Churches (WCC) is a busy place, as students from the WCC Bossey Ecumenical Institute learned during a “Week of Focus” offered by WCC staff.

Media and communicators are invited to an online “press club” event during which they can speak candidly on the theme “Digital instruments – Blessing or Curse?”

During a graduation webcast, students from the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Institute Bossey described what it was like to live for ten months or more in an environment like no other. As they receive their post-graduate degrees in ecumenical studies, they look back fondly on their sense of community, professors—and even the food.

After more than ten years heading the World Council of Churches (WCC), Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit says this is the time that "we should remind one another that we believe in God as the “Good shepherd” who promised to be with us also in times of crisis,” especially in this time of the global COVID-19 crisis.

After more than 30 years as a pastor, ecumenist and church leader, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit firmly believes that the church can change the world. As general secretary of the WCC for the past ten years, he has witnessed what Jesus Christ means to people of faith around the globe. By the end of this month he heads home to lead the Church of Norway as presiding bishop of its bishop’s conference.

Students graduating at mountain-framed Bossey on the banks of Lake Geneva have admitted that the decision to come to the WCC Ecumenical Institute was not easy, but they left as a family with proof "that Christian unity can be lived."

Any prospective student who intends to study at the WCC Ecumenical Institute at Château de Bossey, in its picturesque setting near Geneva, soon learns it is an exceptional place.

The Shia Muslim student from Canada, the Presbyterian Christian student from India and some of their companions reluctantly set off for an early run on a chilly morning to the Geneva lakeside little knowing what sunrise would bring.

Dr Cecile De Sweemer, who served as staff of the Christian Medical Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 1982 to 1986, died on the 27 November in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). De Sweemer, a Belgian medical doctor with a doctorate in International Health from Johns Hopkins University, with extensive experience in Asia and Africa, was a dedicated and compassionate physician.

On 6 November, Rev. Samson Olasupo A. Ayokunle, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria and Nigerian Baptist Convention, offered a morning prayer about “Empowering Our Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace through Love" during the WCC Executive Committee meeting in Uppsala, Sweden.

Leaders from more than 20 international and national associations of Christian entrepreneurs from 60 countries and diverse Christian traditions gathered at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva from 22-23 January for a conference titled, “Faith-based Entrepreneurs: Stronger Together.”

There are currently over 65 million people around the world who have been forced from their homes, according to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, but all those who are displaced are not mere statistics. They are people, something that can be missed by the mass media in reporting on them. This observation was highlighted in a discussion at the WCC on 30 January when representatives of church groups, the United Nations and a Christian media organization discussed media coverage of refugees at a “tray-lunch” presentation.

On 29 January 2018, the WCC invites media to a public panel discussion on “Christianity and human rights in multi-faith Nigeria”, hosted at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva at 14.00-15.30. The event is followed by a press briefing. The event forms part of a visit to Geneva by His Holiness Pope Dr Rufus Okikiola Ositelu, Primate and Metropolitan Archbishop of the Church of The Lord (Prayer Fellowship) Worldwide, and will feature a discussion on current challenges for Christianity in Nigeria and Africa as a whole, as well as how churches address human rights violations in a multi-faith context.