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WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit is visiting Czech Republic this week, joining the Evangelical Church of the Brethren in the celebration of its 100th anniversary, then meeting with leaders from the Czechoslovak Hussite Church.

On 14-16 December, the Conference of European Churches and Cumberland Lodge in the UK will host an Ecumenical Conference on Human Rights with the theme “Towards Peaceful Coexistence in the Middle East: Challenges and Opportunities.”

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.

Participants in an international conference on “The Holy Scripture in a Changing World,” held in Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, Armenia from 27 September-1 October released a communiqué describing their experience and insights.

The Romani people, also known as the Roma, migrated from northwest India 1,500 years ago. Once they arrived in Europe, they spread across the continent from the Balkan region. Now Romani live worldwide, though principally in Europe.

"Let us all learn how to listen without interrupting, and how to speak without accusing, and how to share without pretending, how to enjoy without complaint, how to trust without wavering, how to promise without forgetting, and how to forgive - and forgive is the greatest teaching in Islam - without punishing."

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.

At a global conference on xenophobia in Rome, a panel of four religious leaders from, respectively, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Islamic traditions, spoke candidly about how xenophobia can sometimes be woven deeply into the fabric of these traditions.

At a time of increased divisions within churches and within rapidly changing societies, Christians are called, more urgently than ever before, to model the values of reconciliation, justice and peace. That’s why a group of theologians and church leaders from different denominations have been meeting near the German city of Augsburg to work together on two documents calling for much closer collaboration in the tasks of peace-building and the care of migrants and refugees.

The archbishop Dr Nathan Söderblom, an ecumenical forerunner and messenger of peace in war-torn Europe, challenged a deeply divided Christianity 100 years ago. Against all odds, the Stockholm Conference on Life and Work in 1925 gathered church leaders at a scale the world had not seen since Nicaea 1600 years earlier. And it did not end there.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim students who attended the World Council of Churches (WCC) 2018 Interreligious Summer School at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey said that learning to break down prejudices about the other was a lasting impression from the six-week course.

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.

Heads of churches in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories have reacted with dismay and concern to the Israeli Knesset’s adoption on 19 July 2018 of a new Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People, which specifies that “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Christian Churches, one of Christianity’s oldest and has been in Africa since 330 AD, so there was joy and celebrations when on 27 July it declared an end to a 27-year-old schism that had torn it apart.

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

Applications are now open for YATRA (Youth in Asia Training for Religious Amity) 2018, an inter-religious training programme of the WCC. The intensive training course, held annually since 2014, seeks to enable young Christian leaders from Asian churches to contribute towards the building up of just, harmonious and peaceable communities by equipping them for ministries of justice and peace from an inter-religious perspective.

”We are a movement of people whose faith has called us to open our hearts and our communities to refugees,” reads the presentation of Faith Over Fear, a new initiative brought to the fore by Religions for Peace, UNICEF, and a global coalition of religious leaders, including the World Council of Churches.

The Meeting on the Implementation of the Plan of Action for Religious Leaders and Actors to Prevent Incitement to Violence that Could Lead to Atrocity Crimes will take place in the Vienna International Center, United Nations Office in Vienna, from 13-15 February 2018.

This year it is five hundred years since the Reformation. This has been commemorated throughout the year. A lot has happened in the world. The Reformation is ongoing in churches around the world. Discussions are constantly held about how a church should be today and how to reach out with the gospel. WCC News meets Bishop Helga Haugland Byfuglien this year, one of the most experienced and prominent women among Lutheran bishops in the world.