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The World Council of Churches (WCC) congratulates the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC) on its 50th Jubilee. 

WCC shares congratulations to Archbishop Hosam Naoum on installation as new primate of Anglican Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East.

Archbishop Chrysostomos II, head of the Church of Cyprus died on 7 November at age 81. WCC acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca expressed deep sadness at the loss of Chrysostomos II.

World Council of Churches acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca extended condolences upon the passing of Dr Gabriel Habib, who served the Middle East Council of Churches as secretary general from 1977 to 1994.

After family members of a DanChurchAid employee were killed in Gaza during the current hostilities, World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca sent a letter of condolence to both DanChurchAid and Norwegian Church Aid, WCC partner organizations that have been working in Gaza since the early 1950s.

It is with great affliction and sorrow that we followed the devastating news of the explosions in the Beirut port on 4 August. On behalf of World Council of Churches fellowship, I want to express my deepest compassion and solidarity to you, to the people of Beirut and all Lebanon.

Greetings to H.B. Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church of Babylon from Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, WCC general secretary

In a letter to the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, His Eminence Professor Dr Ahmad al-Tayyeb, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit expressed his profound condolences following an attack on a Sufi mosque in Egypt’s North Sinai region in which hundreds of people were killed.

Letter to WCC member churches in Israel and Palestine, by the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, expressing concern over the renewed wave of violence in Jerusalem.

It is with concern that we hear of the outbreak of MERS in South Korea following the identification of the first case on 20th May 2015, coming from an unfortunate traveller who had recently visited an affected area in the Middle East.

Letter to the WCC member churches and Central Committee members inviting special prayers for Syria and beyond by the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit.

Letter from WCC general secretary to Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Catholicos Aram I of Cilicia and Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of all Armenians, condemning attacks on the sacred sanctuary of the Holy Martyrs Church of Deir Zor, Syria.

Open letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon by Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, associate general secretary of the WCC, expressing concern over the fate of hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic groups being killed and forced to flee from their ancestral land in Iraq by radical combatants from the so-called “Islamic State”.

An open letter to the WCC member churches in Northern Iraq by Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri, associate general secretary of the WCC, soliciting prayers for the Christians, the church communities and all the suffering people on the Plain of Nineveh in northern Iraq, as well as the surrounding region. Reports in recent days have confirmed the forced displacement and indiscriminate killing of Christians, Yazidis, and members of other vulnerable religious and ethnic communities in Iraq as the result of military attacks by the “Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham” (ISIS).