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World Council of Churches Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay congratulated Brother Matthew, the new prior of the Taize Community. 

During the global pandemic it is not any more possible to be present at special celebrations in the ecumenical and global fellowship. The new realities connect the local and global work in a new and innovative way. The WCC is present digitally in many gatherings.

Protopresbyter Boris Bobrinskoy, one of the best-known Orthodox theologians in France and a former member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission, passed away in Paris in the night from 6 to 7 August at the age of 95. He was highly respected for the contributions he made to ecumenical dialogues and academic institutions over many decades. In a tribute published in its website, the WCC celebrated Bobrinskoy’s “long and impressive ecumenical pilgrimage.”

A century after the landmark Paris Peace Conference that followed the First World War, representatives of churches from throughout Europe gathered in the French capital to seek ways of strengthening peace in the 21st century.

On 14 February, the Global Christian Forum Committee concluded a fruitful five-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where priorities were carved out and future directions of the network outlined.

More than 220 church leaders representing over 20 churches from Belgium, France, Luxemburg and Switzerland are meeting from 27-31 October in the French city of Lyon for the first Francophone Christian Forum.

A nine-year long process by a Lutheran-Roman Catholic Study Commission on Unity has closed its work with a meeting in Klingenthal, France from 18-24 July, with the intention of producing a study report.

The WCC acting general secretary, Georges Lemopoulos, has called for prayer and acts of common caring following a murderous attack on holiday makers in the southern French city of Nice.

From Paris to Pakistan, Orlando to Myanmar, Iraq to Nigeria, each day witnesses conflict and violence perpetrated in the name of religion or committed against persons because of their religious identity.

The Faith and Order Commission’s convergence text “The Church: Towards a Common Vision” continues to be discussed by churches on a journey toward revealing the unity of the church and how it is inextricably bound on a pilgrimage of justice and peace.

Violence in the name of religion echoed in the distance, demanding a response, through the November 2015 meeting of the 25-member Executive Committee of the WCC in Bogis-Bossey and nearby Geneva, Switzerland as it planned the work of the Council in the coming years.

Commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 was to have been the principal focus of the service of Sunday morning prayer on 15 November in the cathedral church of Saint-Pierre at the summit of Geneva’s old town. Following terror attacks in Beirut and Paris killing and wounding hundreds of civilians over the preceding days, the prayers of the Protestant Church of Geneva and the WCC Executive Committee took on a new dimension.

In Taizé, the week-long Gathering for a New Solidarity, for solidarity with the poor and excluded, reached its climax on the weekend of 15-16 August. The ecumenical community is celebrating in 2015 the seventy-fifth anniversary of its foundation by Roger Schutz, as well as the one hundredth anniversary of his birth (on 12 August 1915). Also 16 August was the tenth anniversary of his death.

Young ecumenical leaders from Asia have met in Siam Reap, Cambodia to examine how religious traditions can offer resources to overcome religious violence in a changing Asian context.

Attacks last week on French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, along with attacks on Paris police and shoppers at a Jewish grocery there, triggered vigorous reflections on freedom of expression, religious values and the role of churches in a WCC Communications Forum.

The newly published issue of Current Dialogue is now available online. Along with key documents from the WCC 10th Assembly, the issue includes several strong pieces addressing some thorny issues in contemporary inter-religious encounter and dialogue, including the recent Malaysian prohibition of Christian use of the name Allah for God, the relationship of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, the particular difficulties in dialogue among the Abrahamic traditions, and the limits of dialogue itself.