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Swedish communication specialist Marianne Ejdersten has recently been appointed as director for Communication at the WCC.

The “pilgrimage is both a way to continue working for the one ecumenical movement and a way to move forward in our times that offer new dimensions, opportunities and practices,” said the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit.

“When we talk about assets-based ‘diakonia’, we mean building and strengthening fellowship among churches and their ecumenical partners,” said the Rev. Dr Dongsung Kim, WCC programme executive for diakonia and ecumenical solidarity, in a workshop at the ACT Alliance Assembly.

Rev. Dr Ester Pudjo Widiasih has recently been appointed as programme executive for spiritual life at the WCC. Widiasih, who comes from the Javanese Christian Churches in Indonesia, is experienced in the field of church music and worship.

A WCC team met last week with religious leaders and community members in northern Iraq to assess the situation of heightened violence and displacement due to attacks by militants of the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (IS).

When the Central Committee of the WCC convenes in plenary sessions during the course of its current meeting, the 150 representatives of member churches and assorted observers gather in the W.A. Visser ’t Hooft Hall, the main meeting room of the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland. The room is named for a theologian from the Netherlands who served as the first general secretary of the WCC from 1948 to 1966.

The WCC general secretary extended greetings from the worldwide fellowship of churches to Archbishop Dr Antje Jackelén at her inauguration. Jackelén, born 1955 in Germany, was ordained in the Church of Sweden in 1980, and elected to be Sweden's first female archbishop in October 2013.

The upcoming WCC 10th Assembly is not only a pivotal moment in the life of the global fellowship of 345 member churches but also a defining moment for the WCC and its programmatic and financial partners.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has been playing an active role in the two major events that are taking place in Rio from 12 to 23 June: the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio+20, and the People’s Summit.

"€œDiakonia is an essential ecclesial function. It must be prophetic and transformative. It cannot be opted only in convenient forms,"€ asserted participants of a World Council of Churches (WCC) conference, reflecting on "€œTheology of Diakonia for the 21st Century"€. The event took place from 2 to 6 June in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The human rights of migrant workers in the Arabian Gulf region was the subject of a consultation convened at Santhigiri Ashram in Alwaye, India by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Christian Conference of Asia.

Representatives of a broad range of Christian churches and organizations met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 14 to 19 January to complete a report and make recommendations for significant advances toward Christian unity and inter-religious cooperation.

More than forty participants from diverse Christian backgrounds gathered in Brazil, coming from several Latin American countries sought dynamic ways of ecumenical formation of diaconal work at a “Latin American Formation Seminar on Diakonia” which took place from 21-24 November.

In comments to staff of the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 18 August, the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit expressed alarm at the “blocking and hindering of the food supply in famine-struck Somalia, with the effect that more and more people are dying. This interference with humanitarian aid is inhumane and must be strongly condemned.”

“There is no theological reflection that does not take place in God’s vulnerable world and in the midst of the joy and suffering of ordinary people,” said the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit in his report to the first meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee that he has addressed as general secretary.

Full text of WCC public statements available, see below