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Bishop Dr Tamás Fabiny, Lutheran World Federation vice president for Central Eastern Europe, remembered deceased refugees in a sermon at the prayer gathering of the Sant’Egidio community in Budapest on 22 November. He also urged churches to continue to advocate for open and supportive attitudes toward refugees, especially in communities where prejudice is steeped in tradition.

A coalition of faith-based organizations is emphasizing a joint approach in addressing unprecedented levels of violence against women and girls.

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.

Mere days after terror attacks in Beirut and Paris, the theme of an interfaith meeting of Christians and Muslims at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva on “Religion, Peace and Violence” was entirely appropriate, said participants.

The WCC “is moving forward on our common pilgrimage, even as we face many challenges,” general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit affirmed in his semi-annual report to the WCC Executive Committee.

An historic consultation of church leaders, drawn from 56 nations, to focus on intensifying "discrimination, persecution and violence" against Christian communities around the world has called on churches globally to pray, support and be in solidarity with those suffering persecution due to their faith.

The theme “Discrimination, Persecution, Martyrdom: Following Christ Together” remained in sharp focus at a Global Christian Forum consultation in Albania. The event from 1-5 November in Tirana gathered some 150 international participants, including representatives of the WCC.

Cardinal Kurt Koch of the Roman Catholic Church, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has granted an interview to WCC News. The conversation took place at the Global Christian Forum in Tirana, Albania where 150 high level leaders and representatives of various church traditions from more than 60 countries gathered to listen and learn from one another and to stand in solidarity with churches and Christians experiencing discrimination and persecution in the world today.

Today 35 bishops and church leaders from 20 countries gathered in Munich, Germany to discuss the refugee situation and the role of the churches in Europe.

The international refugee crisis will be the focus of a consultation of 35 bishops and church leaders from 20 countries, to be held on 29 October in Munich, Germany. There will be representatives from churches in the most affected regions and from most of the church families in Europe: Orthodox, Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, Methodist and representatives from the Middle East and Africa, as well as representatives from ecumenical organizations and from church-based humanitarian and refugee organizations.

An international conference held at the invitation of the Foreign Minister of the Hellenic Republic, Nikos Kotzias, has gathered around 70 prominent religious, political and academic figures in Athens, Greece, this week.

It is raining. It is cold and windy. Autumn is in the air in northern Greece. We have just arrived at the Idomeni refugee camp in northern Greece, on the border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The fast-approaching winter poses as great a threat to the refugees as do the smugglers. In the worst case, winter means death.

Representatives of the WCC visited Greece to strengthen efforts in support of refugees in Europe and the Middle East.

To achieve just peace in the Middle East, “it is very adequate to focus on what would maintain and reinforce the cultural and religious diversity that has distinguished this region for long centuries,” said the WCC general secretary.

Women are virtually invisible in news reporting on peace and security issues in nations experiencing conflict.

“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.

Representatives of major international ecumenical organizations visited Hungary 25-29 September to strengthen efforts in support of refugees in Europe and the Middle East.

The United Church of Canada intends to pursue its policy of pressing for a peaceful solution to tensions between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories by continuing its economic action against businesses operating in illegal settlements.

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.