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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.

Interview with pastor Martin Robra on the visit of Pope Francis to the World Council of Churches by Antonio Spadaro, SJ

On 18-19 July, 35 young leaders from 14 countries across Asia – part of the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Youth in Asia Training in Religious Amity (YATRA) – travelled to the Indonesian city of Bandung to meet with faith leaders and young activists engaged in interreligious dialogue and work.

Last week, young Jewish, Muslim and Christian students learned about communication and peacebuilding during a workshop at the Ecumenical Centre, all with the hope of serving as peacemakers in their own contexts. The session was led by Marianne Ejdersten, director of WCC Communication.

The World Council of Churches' (WCC) popular YATRA (Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity) programme has a new online learning component that adds four weeks of intensive training to two weeks of residential learning. When 35 young men and women from 14 different countries meet at the Jakarta Theological Seminary in Indonesia on 8 July, they will already have a familiarity with the major religious traditions found in Asia, thanks to their online studies.

As young people from across the world gathered for a three-week Interreligious Summer School at the World Council of Churches (WCC ) Bossey Ecumenical Institute, they heard inspiring greetings about interreligious dialogue from people who encouraged them to contribute to issues of religious pluralism and intercultural acceptance in a society based on migration and globalization.

“Bossey opened my mind and my horizon.” These words from a former student touched Rev. Dr Dagmar Heller, dean of the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, one month ago as the two met at a conference.

Encouragement, inspiration and storytelling animated the plenary discussion of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.

Young ecumenical leaders from Asia have met in Siam Reap, Cambodia to examine how religious traditions can offer resources to overcome religious violence in a changing Asian context.

An ecumenical workshop held recently in Matanzas, Cuba strongly promoted life-affirming epistemologies that can help to envision and construct alternatives to inequitable and destructive socio-economic systems that prevail in today’s world.

Exploring realities of multi-religious societies and discovering new ways of working together as faith communities to promote justice and peace, young Christian leaders from Asia have gathered in Cambodia to take part in a two-week training programme called Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity (YATRA).

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.

A seminar at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland gathered diverse reflections on eco-theology, care for the creation and climate change, and how to build a sustainable world. The contributors included Christian theologians and activists as well as youth.

“It is impossible to speak exclusively for the unity of the church and be indifferent about the unity of humankind,” said Dr Petros Vassiliadis, at an academic gathering held in his honour in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Transformative spiritualities and mission is a significant point of discussion at the pre-assembly event of the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) which is currently under way in Manila. Transformative spiritualities are also one of the constituent themes of the CWME statement on mission and evangelism that will be presented to the WCC 10th Assembly in Busan, Korea in 2013. Dr Rico Palaca Ponce, academic director of the Institute of Spirituality in Asia based in Quezon City, the Philippines, gave an interview on the topic on 23 March.

“Christians are to acknowledge that changing one’s religion is a decisive step that must be accompanied by sufficient time for reflection and preparation, through a process ensuring full personal freedom.” This assertion is one of the guiding principles for Christian mission in India suggested in early March by a consultation convened under the leadership of the Board of Theological Education of the Senate of Serampore University (BTESSC).

by Theodore Gill (*)

“Among the many challenges that we face in the search for Christian unity is the need to overcome divisions and prejudices that exclude one another,” Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC said to the 22nd Pentecostal World Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.