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Encouraging the WCC fellowship in its ongoing call to discipleship together, the WCC central committee commended to WCC member churches the document “Called to Transformation—Ecumenical Diakonia and Addendums.”

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has made several new appointments this year, welcoming programme executives, a programme director, and a new dean of the Bossey Ecumenical Institute.

Gathered in prayer in the Bossey chapel on 14 June, the WCC Ecumenical Institute saw eight new students graduate with a Master of Advanced Studies in Ecumenical Studies.

Interview with pastor Martin Robra on the visit of Pope Francis to the World Council of Churches by Antonio Spadaro, SJ

Intervista al pastore Martin Robra - Antonio Spadaro S.I.

Rt Rev. Dr Samuel Amirtham, an internationally renowned theologian, bishop and ecumenical leader, passed away on 26 September at the age of 85. Amirtham was a multifaceted and charismatic teacher, pastor, leader, and revolutionary, inspiring and accompanying many lives, from remote villages to universities, to the corridors of power.

Father Mikhail Gundyaev grew up in St Petersburg at a time the city was known as Leningrad and when religion was still frowned upon in the then Soviet Union, so studying at Bossey in 1994 and 1995 opened new horizons for him. “It was a valuable and precious experience to meet people from different churches and from many different cultures,” said Gundyaev. “I saw people from Africa who had never seen someone from the Orthodox Church.”

As rector of the only ecumenical theological institution in Cuba, Rev. Dr Carlos Emilio Ham is at the forefront of exploring how local churches can engage in empowering diakonia.

En calidad de rector de la única institución teológica ecuménica de Cuba, el Seminario Evangélico de Teología de Matanzas, el Rev. Dr. Carlos Emilio Ham ha asumido el liderazgo de un estudio sobre cómo pueden las iglesias participar en actividades de empoderamiento y diaconía.

A new initiative titled Ecumenical Institute for the Middle East is “promising and inspiring” in its attempt to train young Christians in ecumenical thought and history, according to Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC.

The WCC is hosting the annual meeting of an international group of people with responsibilities for ecumenical relations in several member churches of the WCC. The spring session of the gathering of the Ecumenical Officers Network is taking the theme “pilgrimage of justice and peace” as the inspiration for learning, reflective study and discussion on current developments in the ecumenical movement.

In the aftermath of an international consultation on the engagement of Christians in ministries of service, relief and development, Cuban theologian Reinerio Arce agreed to be interviewed on the continuing need for “diakonia” as an essential ministry of the ecumenical movement. Dr Arce, president of Matanzas Theological Seminary and moderator of the Presbyterian-Reformed Church in Cuba, was a participant in the Global Consultation on Prophetic Diakonia in Utrecht, the Netherlands, from 13 through 15 December 2010.