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Our successful visit to Rome with various ecumenical deliberations itself testifies that ecumenical engagements can move forward despite the pandemic. The launch of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity document “Ecumenism in a Time of Pandemic: From Crisis to Opportunity,” followed by an ecumenical panel discussion, helped us to understand how different churches have approached the pandemic. 

Who am I?

Bonhoeffer remembrance, April 2005

Ezek. 37:1-16, based on a Lenten devotional poem from prison

Theodore Gill, Ecumenical Centre Chapel, Geneva, on the 60th anniversary of Bonhoeffer's death.

Nigerians, like the rest of the world, have had to battle the threat of COVID-19 since the beginning of the year 2020.

15 July 2020 marked 35 years of the launch of “Brasil: Nunca Mais” (‘Brazil: Never Again’, in English) a book in which episodes of torture under the military dictatorship in Brazil between 1964 and 1979 are documented.

Annika Ahlefelt traveled to the Ecumenical Centre in February to learn more about the ecumenical movement as a journalist from one of Sweden’s leading church magazines.

An article on an interesting subject? No, not this time. I can only write from the deep crisis situation we are in at present. There is nothing else that keeps me more busy than the question of how to live with the anxiety and fear of the coronavirus and what to make of it.

The WCC’s Ecumenical Institute was inaugurated in 1946 at the scenic Château de Bossey, on Lake Geneva. It draws students from churches within and outside the WCC and enables direct contact with people of different faiths each year.

"He could make the stones sing." That was his reputation at the Ecumenical Centre; never mind that the image was less than flattering to the staff who worked there.

Do you know of the five stages of grief? When it comes to the climate crisis, I am close to having gone through all of them: years ago I could not believe how bad Mother Earth has been affected by how humans are treating her. I thought it can't be as bad as the scientists say: denial.

Creating art or poems is a way to reimagine the future, to build bridges and foster understanding, to develop empathy, to make friends, to express feelings, to build self-confidence, to learn how to be flexible and open-minded, to be exposed to different ideas and learn to listen to the views of others, to work collaboratively. These are all attributes that can help to promote peace.

There is a saying that “people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”. There are undoubtedly many things we could aspire to learn when it comes to the possibilities of learning from history and the people that left a legacy of their work, setting foundations for the future in which is now our present.

I was not yet born in 1968, but I have heard the stories: How the World Council of Churches Assembly in Uppsala, Sweden changed the world church agenda and put focus on social justice and equality. To live and to practice the Gospel. To show the reality and embrace of the Incarnation.

50 years after the 1968 Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Olle Alkholm, vice president of the Uniting Church in Sweden, shares a personal reflection, based on his only memory from that year.

On 1 May, the old police headquarters of the Federal Police in São Paulo, Brazil, burned down and collapsed. Rev. Rolf Schünemann reflects that the building, in fact, not only an historic site but a living ecumenical presence that touched the lives of thousands of people over more than 100 years.

One of the most well known and remarkable personalities in the history of the ecumenical movement is Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. His name is forever carved into world history and into the history of the churches’ witness in the world. Today, 50 years after his assassination, he is honoured, and he is inspiring the churches worldwide to continue the work he was leading. His message should be both guiding us and disturbing us.

I sometimes ask people if they know which is the first point in the Bible that Bethlehem gets a mention. And that normally offers them quite a challenge. People certainly move back from the New Testament into the Old – and come up with responses like, ‘the story of David’, or ‘the Book of Ruth’. Good thinking. But actually the first mention of Bethlehem in our Bibles (as they are now set out) occurs much earlier still.

I don’t think that the news that the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Nobel Peace Prize has fully felt like a reality for any of us who have been involved with this work over the years. Since the prize announcement on Friday, we have had the opportunity to raise our message in an unprecedented way but it is still that message at the heart of what we are doing – that nuclear weapons are immoral, unethical, dangerous and now, illegal.

I was sitting in the space reserved for media, in the back of the plenary hall, when Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, of the Roman Catholic Church, brought greetings from Pope Francis to the 12th Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Windhoek, Namibia.