News and stories

A common prayer and message for peace in Palestine and Israel is ready for use in about 100 countries. Churches in 17 countries, plus two international ecumenical organizations, are planning various education and advocacy activities. These and more are part of a global week of action led by the World Council of Churches (WCC), 4-10 June 2008. This year marks 60 years since the partition of Palestine and 41 years of occupation.

A consultation co-sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Mennonite World Conference in October 2007 submitted a joint contribution to the World Council of Churches for the end of the Decade to Overcome Violence Ecumenical Declaration on Just Peace.

Metropolitan Dr Zacharias Mar Theophilus, from the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar, India, was a member of an ecumenical team that recently visited Sudan's Yambio region. The capital city of West Equatoria state, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yambio is green and fertile. "But the people we met there feel ignored," says Metropolitan Theophilus, "ignored by Khartoum, ignored by Juba, ignored by...

"Peace is the opposite of security" - This quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer became one of the leading sentences during an international ecumenical conference, held in Seoul from March 31 to April 4. Some 60 representatives from Japan, Germany and South Korea got together to discuss the UN-concept on "human security".

Based on a candid assessment of how two decades of war have affected them, Sudanese youth told church leaders what they need most: skills training, jobs and means of participating in shaping their country?s future. Sudanese women, in turn, spoke out about their vulnerability, increased by war and cultural patterns.

"We remain committed to work side by side with the churches", the president of Southern Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit told representatives of an international ecumenical delegation in Juba, Southern Sudan, on 3 April 2008.

Sudanese churches stand at a crossroads, said the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia. On the one hand, they face a transition from liberation fight to rebuilding their homes and communities. On the other, they live in a country where Islam and Christianity cross paths and the relationship between the two is vital.

In Khartoum, the capital city of Sudan, it is hard for Christians to have their own place - even after they have died. The city's Christian cemetery, which has been turned into a sales park for second hand cars, illustrates well the challenges faced by the minority Christian community in the northern, predominantly Muslim part of the country.

Amid ongoing fighting and humanitarian crises in several regions of Sudan, and risks of failure in implementing the 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war between north and south, the Sudanese people and churches face "tremendous tasks and challenges", an international ecumenical team of church representatives was told at the beginning of an eight-day solidarity visit to the country.

An international ecumenical team of church representatives will pay a solidarity visit to churches and ecumenical organizations in Sudan from 26 March to 2 April. The team led by the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia will split in four groups to visit Darfur, Khartoum, Rumbek and Yambio before joining Sudanese church leaders, women and youth for a three-day conference in Juba.