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Peace prayers and a concert in South Korea on 27 July marked the lead-up to World Council of Churches (WCC) 11th Assembly while expressing the fervent hope for the reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

Bringing together biblical, theological and practical perspectives on human dignity, participants of the international conference in Wuppertal challenged churches for a common understanding and protection of human rights during the public panel discussion on 11 April.

If digital social justice begins with connectivity, perhaps it ends when that connectivity is usurped by oppressive regimes, extremists, fake news and hate speech. A “press club”-style conversation on 13 September found theologians, politicians, church communicators, activists and journalists from around the world weighing in on the short but exceedingly complex question, “Digital instruments – Blessing or Curse?”

In a declaration on 23 August, the 10th World Assembly of Religions for Peace called for caring for our common future and advancing shared well-being. The assembly, held in Lindau, Germany, drew 900 people from 125 countries.

A conference in Berlin has recalled how in 1989 an ecumenical assembly mobilised dissent in the former East Germany in the run-up to a peaceful revolution that led to the collapse of communism and the end of the Berlin Wall.

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.

Former German President Richard von Weizsäcker, died on 31 January. He was 94. “The WCC remembers with deep gratitude Dr Richard von Weizsäcker for the gifts he brought to his church, the wider ecumenical movement and the world,” wrote the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, in a letter to von Weizsäcker’s wife Dr Marianne Baroness von Weizsäcker.

The opening of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago was one of the most dramatic symbols of the global changes sweeping across the world in 1989.