Iranian rector Ayatollah M. Seyyed Abolhassan Nawab and Ms Zahra Sedigh, from the Iranian Mission to the UN,visited the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 27 July, discussing education and formation, as well as the importance of strengthening the role of interreligious cooperation.
Each year students from all over the world arrive at Bossey near Geneva for a three-month language training course to pave their way for ecumenical studies that follow on straight after. “The title captures the goal of the course,” says Father Lawrence Iwuamadi, the Nigerian priest who studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and is academic dean of the Ecumenical Institute.
As students gathered at the WCC Ecumenical Institute at Bossey for an interreligious summer school, they reflected on what brought them to the institute, and what knowledge and insights they will take home.
Young people are very much affected by the violence and tensions along religious lines that we are witnessing today in the Middle East but also in Europe, Asia, North America. The seminar is an interfaith initiative jointly organized by the Egyptian Muslim Centre Al Azhar (mosque and university), and the WCC.
Young people of the Christian, Muslim and Jewish faiths have created a unique community during a summer course at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey. Together they seek to break religious stereotypes, promote mutual respect and enhance their understanding of religions beyond the conflict paradigm.