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The World Association for Christian Communication is creating a rapid response fund to help support grassroots community media outlets that provide accurate, trusted coronavirus-related information to vulnerable people who often cannot access mainstream media. Individuals and organisations are encouraged to contribute to the fund.

Born in Nazareth, Galilee, Rev. Dr Saïd Ailabouni moved to the US at the age of 19 to become a physician. But he was so angry at God that he went to study theology instead, becoming a Lutheran pastor. Now he is leading the Middle East & Europe desk of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Since leaving his hometown 50 years ago, he visits his Palestinian family regularly. As the World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel approaches, Ailabouni agreed to share some of his lifetime observations with the Word Council of Churches.

What else could your family, your parish, your community do to respond to the needs of migrants and refugees arriving in your country? Representatives of many different churches met in Rome in September to discuss that practical question, as well as respond to the broader challenge of how people of faith can combat the rising tide of racism, xenophobia and nationalist policies that increasingly target vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers.

When the WCC joined the Blue Communities Project on 25 October, water and eco-justice advocates from around the world offered congratulations, while at the same time urging WCC member churches to join the quest for global water and sanitation rights.

Women and children figure prominently as refugees in mass movements of people in recent months and their rights will be at the forefront of a summer school organized in Greece by the Conference of European Churches.

Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, and other faith communities are urging the U.S. government to resettle 100,000 Syrian refugees this coming fiscal year, in addition to increasing the total U.S. resettlement commitment to 100,000 refugees from other parts of the world.

WCC general secretary Olav Fykse Tveit preached at the 7 May ecumenical service in Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide.

An urgent call for protection of human rights, peace and security in the Middle East and South Sudan was recently issued by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA at its first Christian Unity Gathering from 18 to 20 May in Washington, D.C.

Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, newly elected patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East, has received congratulations and an affirmation of support from the WCC general secretary.

World leaders at the United Nations last week backed two steps in relation to the Arms Trade Treaty, promoted by churches, to make people safer through new laws to control deadly weapons.

While condemning all use of chemical weapons in Syria, the WCC general secretary said that “we must do everything possible to starve the fire of war rather than feeding it with further deadly armaments.”