DIALOGUE
“The world is crying out for reconciliation. To serve such need, we must respond to Jesus’s prayer and be reconciled with each other”. This is how the archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, announced he would be in Geneva this afternoon for the ceremony for the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the World Council of Churches. Archbishop Welby will give a speech on the “Ecumenical Spring”. The life of the World Council of Churches (Wcc) began when the ecumenical movement did. Now, it includes 349 Churches from all of the main Christian traditions, mainly Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox ones. The Catholic Church attends as an “observer” but it is a full member of the “Faith and Order” Committee. The Council, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, includes through its Churches a total of about 590 million people, in about 150 countries across the world. It was founded to walk towards the visible unity of the Church and thus act in the world as a tool of reconciliation and service, especially where peace is most threatened and poverty afflicts peoples. There are now different lines of actions in which WCC is engaged: theological dialogue between Churches, interreligious dialogue, especially with Jews and Muslims, spiritual reflections through the worldwide promotion of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, care for Creation, fight against any form of racism, support to social justice projects, especially those involving children. After the initial success of the ecumenical movement that appeared in the 1900s, Christian Church leaders agreed to found a World Council of Churches, based on experience gained in previous partnerships with other organisations, such as “Faith and Order” and “Life and Work”, born after the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. But, because of the outbreak of the Second World War, the WCC was formally established in Amsterdam on August 23rd 1948, in the presence of 147 Church leaders.
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