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Archbishop Job of Telmessos, who serves as permanent representative of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the World Council of Churches (WCC), met with the WCC News and describes receiving an extraordinary gift from Pope Francis on 29 June.

When he was asked last year to take over as vicar in the parish of Ilulissat, on Greenland’s west coast, Loqqi Fleischer was a bit anxious about how the transition from his smaller hometown Uummannaq, further north along the coastline, would work out. Nevertheless, he took on the challenge and was warmly welcomed right away in the new environment.

It is midnight and the sun just about hides for a little while beneath the horizon. The calm sea is scattered with icebergs in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Some are like five-story buildings, with vertical sharp-edged walls rising high above the surface. Others are more like snow-capped hilltops, slowly ploughing through the blank water.

His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, speaking at the Halki Summit III in Istanbul, reflected that all of us are called to serve as priests of God’s creation.

In Greenland, travel by either air or boat is the conventional – and only – way of getting from place to place. The distances between populated areas scattered along the rugged coastline of the world’s largest island are long and there are no roads connecting cities and settlements. Neither railways nor inland waterways exist and some rural areas can only be reached by helicopter. In winter, dog-sled is an alternative, particularly in the north and east.

The Ecumenical Patriarch, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, delivered a public address at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva on 24 April as part of his official visit to Switzerland on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his enthronement as Ecumenical Patriarch and the 50th anniversary of the Orthodox Centre of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy.

He earned the title “Green Patriarch” as a religious leader addressing alarming environmental issues over at least two decades. In 2008, Time Magazine named His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as one of 100 Most Influential People in the World, for “defining environmentalism as spiritual responsibility”.

Orthodox primates have attended a meeting chaired by the Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew, in Chambésy, Geneva, Switzerland, and set a June date for a larger Orthodox convocation, the Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church.

Churches in Europe have a crucial role to play in responding to the arrival of refugees in Europe, Germany's interior minister has told a gathering in Geneva of governments, United Nations agencies, church and faith groups and civil society organizations.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople hosted a special meeting on 4 and 5 January at which participants from diverse fields of study shared their reflections on current challenges and aspirations for theology in the life of the Orthodox Churches.

In a letter to the Bishop of Copenhagen, Peter Skov Jakobsen, the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has expressed his deep concern on the acts of terror that have hit the Nordic countries again. “You and your people are in my and our prayers these days. Your church has a strong voice for justice and for peace, for living together in the mystery and gift of creation as human beings,” he writes.

“If we are to respond to the ecological crisis in a responsible and substantial way, we must move beyond mere talk to practical action,” said Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople in an official message to the Interfaith Summit on Climate Change to be held this week in New York City.

These pilgrims are laughing a lot. After intensely debating everything from church unity to the very meaning of the word “pilgrimage” last week, some members of the WCC Central Committee embarked on a three-hour hike on Sunday afternoon that revealed the not-so-serious side of the WCC governing body.

While Bishop Sofie Petersen can talk convincingly about the science behind climate change, she'd rather talk about what's happening to the people in her home region of Greenland.