When the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022, churches had already been responding to humanitarian need in the country for eight years, since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The work being undertaken by churches in meeting the needs of those displaced by the war is not new, but the scale is staggering as 14 million people have been displaced in the six months since the invasion began.
Recalling believers’ mandate to act as stewards and beneficiaries of God’s creation, the World Council of Churches (WCC) Assembly gathered in morning prayer on the first day of September, the Orthodox Day of Prayer for Creation and the start of an ecumenically observed Season of Creation. At the heart of the liturgical action was a combining of vessels of water from each inhabited region of the earth, a “gathering of the waters” reflecting the earliest act of creation in Genesis 1:9.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is looking to its assembly at the end of August in Karlsruhe to raise up the issue of climate justice and underline the need to care for the creation, says the WCC’s acting general secretary, Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca.
In a letter to H.H. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia on 19 April, World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca urged Patriarch Kirill to “intervene and ask publicly for a ceasefire for at least few hours during the Resurrection service.”
In a letter to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, president of the Russian Federation, and Volodymyr Oleksandrovytch Zelensky, president of Ukraine, World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca urged the leaders to listen to the cries of their own faithful people.
In a response to a letter from First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska, World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca expressed both his appreciation for her candid reflections as well as his own pain at the ongoing and increasingly grave humanitarian consequences of the conflict.
A delegation from ACT Alliance and the World Council of Churches (WCC) visited Hungary, Ukraine and Romania on 14-18 March, focusing on humanitarian needs and church response.
A call for solidarity with the poor was delivered to a gathering of religious, political and civil society leaders from all over the world by one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The meeting on the topic âBound to Live Together: Religions and Cultures in Dialogueâ is taking place from 11-13 September in Munich, Germany.