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After postponing their unique ecumenical pilgrimage of peace to South Sudan, world Christian leaders will travel to the world’s youngest nation in February.

In the years since it was founded in 2016, the International Centre for Inter-Faith Peace and Harmony in Kaduna, Nigeria has been building a cadre of peacemakers who are witnesses to inter-religious peace and harmony. It also continues to serve as a physical symbol helping Muslims and Christians work together more effectively.

South Sudanese church leaders have welcomed a new cabinet, which the country’s president Salva Kiir Mayardit announced on 12 March.

The unveiling of the cabinet ended months of anxious waiting for a new unity government which was mandated by a 2018 peace pact, known as the Revitalised Agreement for the Resolution of Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan. The government has 34 ministers and 10 deputies.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Council for World Mission assembled theologians, activists, practitioners and religious leaders for a consultation on interfaith dialogue and liberation from 22-24 October in Nairobi, Kenya.

The National Council of Churches USA (NCCUSA) will confer its President’s Award for Excellence in Faithful Leadership to Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the World Council of Churches’ (WCC) central committee.

When Sudanese women join the mass protests for change and reforms, demonstrators revere them as Kandakes or Candances – the queens of the ancient African Kingdoms of Kush.

Peace education to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between people involving the religious and secular sectors is needed to counter uncertainty fed by radicalization and xenophobia, says a leading human rights advocate.

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.

The primate of The Church of the Lord, Aladura, Worldwide, an African initiated church founded in 1925 talks with pride about how the founder had a calling from God to have women serving with men in pastoral work. Primate Rev. Dr Rufus Okikiolaolu Ositelu, metropolitan archbishop of the church visited Geneva and the WCC on 29-30 January.

When more than 100 religious leaders and other actors from around the world gathered at the UN in Vienna in mid-February, it was a manifestation of unity between religious and non-religious organizations, and a genuine commitment to cooperate in dealing with hate speech and incitement to violence that could lead to atrocity crimes.

World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit addressed the status of Jerusalem at the international "World Conference in Support of Jerusalem" on 17-18 January in Cairo, Egypt, organized by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh al-Tayyib, under the auspices of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

In many ways, the World Council of Churches (WCC) pilgrimage of justice and peace hinges on protecting, advocating, and educating people about human rights. In Nigeria, a series of workshops in November promoted human rights across a number of WCC programme areas, including the Churches’ Commitments to Children, preventing gender-based violence, and engaging with the United Nations human rights system.

In a pilgrimage of justice and peace in Burundi on 8-10 November, African women of faith met some of the world’s most pressing problems - poverty, violence and climate change - with faith, hope and action.

WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit condemned an attack at a mosque in Egypt during which hundreds of people are believed dead. Tveit expressed sorrow for the lives lost as news continued to unfold of the attack on 24 November.

Together with the heads of the Coptic, Syrian, Armenian and Indian Orthodox Churches, the Evangelical Church in Germany celebrated on Saturday evening in Berlin an ecumenical prayer for Christians in the Middle East. The jointly prepared service was the highlight of a historic visit. For the first time, Pope Tawadros II, Patriarch Ignatius Afrem II, Catholicos Karekin II and Catholicos Baselios Morthoma Paulose II visited together in Germany to inform political and church representatives on the bad and sad situation in the region of origin of Christianity.