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Speaking through reflections and a sermon during an international peace gathering in Berlin, World Council of Churches moderator Bishop Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm reflected on how people of faith can work to overcome suffering in a wounded world.

Peter Prove, director of the World Council of Churches Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, spoke on a nuclear weapons-free world during “The Audacity of Peace” gathering in Berlin.

Conversations at the World Council of Churches (WCC) exhibition booth at the Kirchentag showed there is a growing interest in ecumenical movement among German churches. The topics of a particularly high interest were the Thursdays in Black campaign and studies at the Ecumenical institute in Bossey.

The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) was featured in the DW Global Media Forum held 27-28 May in Bonn, Germany. More than 2,000 media professionals, policymakers, and movers from politics and civil society, culture and education, business and science – representing 140 countries – attended the conference.

The WACC-SIGNIS Human Rights Award 2016 has gone to the documentary film Cahier africain directed by Heidi Specogna, who was recognized at an awards ceremony on 19 February in Berlin.

“We’ve seen in the case of refugees, how the church takes a strong standpoint in welcoming those who have fled. But it isn’t always so easy in the congregations. There are many who feel fear, as we receive not only refugees but sometimes also people of other faiths. In this case, we can see a gap between what the church says, and what is actually lived.”

Churches are probably the most powerful global civil society group, and they need to live up to this responsibility in the quest for peace, says German bishop, Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm. Bedford-Strohm, chairperson of the council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), was speaking at an event to promote peace in the Ecumenical Centre on 3 November.

Last Sunday, the “Twin Consultation” on “Reformation – Education – Transformation” wrapped up at the Francke Foundations in Halle, Germany. Held six months after the first consultation in São Leopoldo, Brazil, the five-day session in Halle became a vibrant meeting point and a juncture between different religious contexts from the global North and South.

More than 120 people from throughout the world have gathered in the eastern German city of Halle to reflect on how insights from the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago can contribute to transforming the world today.

Mere days after terror attacks in Beirut and Paris, the theme of an interfaith meeting of Christians and Muslims at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva on “Religion, Peace and Violence” was entirely appropriate, said participants.

Twenty-five years ago, on 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. This came about through a “movement of many people who demonstrated peacefully in the streets,” said WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit.

Pastors from Germany and Argentina reflect on what peace and justice means while a local church in Germany encourages others to do the same through a new resource.