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Attending the Central Committee meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Trondheim is Peder Borgen, who was part of the First Assembly of the WCC in Amsterdam in 1948.

Bonfires on the mountains and joyous celebrations along Norwegian coastlines herald the midsummer holiday known in recent centuries as Jonsok (John’s wake), Sankthansaften (St John’s eve or St Hans’s festival), or the eve of the feast-day of St John the Baptist.

A celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, called the “European Reformation Roadmap,” will begin in November 2016 in Geneva, then tour across sites of significance through May 2017.

For WCC Central Committee member Sonia Tziovanni, youth employment is an issue of the times at her home in Cyprus and everywhere on the planet.

Anticipating the award ceremony of the 2015 Olof Palme Prize on 29 January, the WCC secured interview time with laureates Rev. Dr Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, well-known for his contributions in the Haaretz Daily Newspaper, portraying the lives, the people and the victims in occupied Palestinian territories and Israel.

Renowned for his friendly attitude and his inspiring speeches, nothing seems impossible for this man. He has faced a multitude of difficulties including severe illness and persecution. At age 62, he committed to rebuild the church in the only officially declared atheist state.

The newly appointed general secretary of the Conference of European Churches, Fr Heikki Huttunen, received congratulations from Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC.

“I cannot forget the poignant memories of the march when thousands of refugees set out from Budapest, Hungary, towards Austria, and finally reached the other side of the border aboard buses provided by the Hungarian government,” said Bishop Tamas Fabiny of the Lutheran Church in Hungary, vice-president of the Lutheran World Federation.

Lutheran communication directors and communication officers from the Nordic countries met in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the role of the church in the civil society in a local, national and global context. It’s exactly 90 years since August 1925 when Nathan Söderblom, Swedish ecumenist and Nobel laureate, organized the First International Conference on Life and Work, an ecumenical gathering in Sweden with participants from all over the word.

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.

As organizations worldwide intensify their work on issues of climate justice, and the clock is ticking for new climate commitments to take shape, members of the WCC Working Group on Climate Change have gathered for a four-day meeting to strategize for effective climate justice action and for strong participation of faith-based initiatives at COP21.

Recently, a representative of the WCC, the Swedish crown princess, church leaders and thousands of others took part in the celebration of one thousand years of Christianity in Sweden held in the Diocese of Skara in southern Sweden.

When the Central Committee of the WCC convenes in plenary sessions during the course of its current meeting, the 150 representatives of member churches and assorted observers gather in the W.A. Visser ’t Hooft Hall, the main meeting room of the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland. The room is named for a theologian from the Netherlands who served as the first general secretary of the WCC from 1948 to 1966.

As young people help to facilitate the meeting of the WCC's governing body, they are pursuing a collective pilgrimage of their own.

While the WCC 10th Assembly is several months away, a foretaste of what young people will bring to the assembly and experience is already developing a rhythm.

A seminar at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland gathered diverse reflections on eco-theology, care for the creation and climate change, and how to build a sustainable world. The contributors included Christian theologians and activists as well as youth.