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A delegation from the Evangelical Church in Germany is visiting the WCC on 26-27 October for an ecumenical learning experience that includes prayers with students from the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, an introduction and overview of the work of the WCC, a meeting with the Lutheran World Federation, and a guided tour of the Ecumenical Centre.

Sit beside Bishop Mary Ann Swenson for five minutes, and you see that she is constantly nurturing people to learn more about each other, walk together, and become more unified, no matter their differences.

Canadian Lutheran World Relief and the WCC are planning joint action on refugee rights now that the Canadian church agency has been approved for WCC membership. Plans are for CLWR to collaborate with WCC on advocacy initiatives through the Ecumenical United Nations Office in New York.

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), at its meeting in Trondheim, Norway, 27 June 2016, has elected a new executive committee with 11 new members.

Youth are not the future leaders of tomorrow. They are the leaders of today, as they fearlessly lead efforts for justice and peace in their societies.

Encouragement, inspiration and storytelling animated the plenary discussion of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.

Knut Refsdal started his pilgrimage from the Norwegian capital Oslo to the historic pilgrim town of Trondheim on 24 May. He is scheduled to arrive on the eve of the opening of the meeting of the WCC Central Committee on 21 June.

Experiences of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people around the world will be front and centre at an upcoming international conference in Trondheim, Norway. The Sami Church Council of the Church of Norway and the WCC are the chief organizers behind the conference, “Reconciliation Processes and Indigenous Peoples: Truth, Healing and Transformation,” which will take place from 20-21 June. Coinciding with the National Aboriginal Day of Prayer in Canada, the conference will be held in connection with the WCC Central Committee meeting also taking place in Trondheim from 22-28 June.

After visiting the United States in a spirit of accompaniment, a World Council of Churches delegation is preparing a report on how churches can help achieve racial justice.

Churches can offer a renewed and reinvigorated response to the sin of racial hatred, violence and discrimination in the early 21st century, the delegation found, while at the same time noting the intense need for change.

“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.”

In the Washington DC region on 18 April, Jim Winkler, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, welcomed a contingent from the WCC who, with others, will be spending 18-25 April on a WCC-sponsored racial justice listening and support visit to several US communities which have suffered violent incidents related to race.

Canadian church leaders issued a joint statement endorsing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and promising to implement its principles. Doreen Spence, an aboriginal Canadian who was one of the architects of the declaration, welcomes the move.

“Racism remains an issue that divides society and even families,” said Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), in a Washington DC workshop on “the theological basis for lifting the voice of the marginalized.” She noted that these dramatically relevant words were not her own, but are drawn from a WCC study on race undertaken in the 1990s.

Seventy years after nuclear fireballs exploded over two Japanese cities, an ecumenical group of pilgrims has come to Hiroshima to listen to those who survived and renew the struggle against their own countries’ continued reliance on nuclear weapons.

Church leaders from seven countries currently making historic choices for or against outlawing nuclear weapons will embark on a pilgrimage in early August to the two Japanese cities that were decimated by atomic bombs 70 years ago.

Indigenous peoples have a role to play in the struggle against climate change, indigenous faith leaders said during a panel at the Interfaith Summit on Climate Change held at the Church Center for the United Nations in New York City.

Los pueblos indígenas tienen un papel que desempeñar en la lucha contra el cambio climático, dijeron los líderes religiosos indígenas durante un panel en la Cumbre Interreligiosa sobre el Cambio Climático celebrada en el Centro de la Iglesia para las Naciones Unidas en la ciudad de Nueva York.

Scattered throughout the recent history of Indigenous Peoples are national treaties, declarations and laws that languish in obscurity or are brushed aside and ignored.

An “inter-generational dialogue on faith, culture, HIV and sexual reproductive health and rights” was initiated on 11 March in New York City by the World YWCA in partnership with the WCC and other international organizations. The dialogue was organized as a side event at the United Nations 58th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

Migrants are reduced to mere commodities, traded and exchanged in the global market, according to a declaration issued by churches calling for an end to this gross violation of human dignity. The declaration was issued on the occasion of the Second United Nations High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in New York City, USA.