NEWS EXTRA – World Council of Churches and Catholics map future together after papal visit to Geneva
Ten weeks after Pope Francis visited the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva as “a pilgrim in quest of unity and peace,” church leaders of different churches representing the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church are meeting in Germany this week to continue their task of “walking, praying and working together.”
This is an edited translation of an address given on 20 July 2017, the 73rd anniversary of the bomb plot against Adolf Hitler, at the Adam von Trott Foundation in Imshausen, Germany. It recalls the contacts of Willem A. Visser 't Hooft, the first general secretary of the World Council of Churches, with the German resistance during the Second World War, discusses the relevance of their vision of the post‐war future to contemporary politics, and highlights the significance of Visser 't Hooft for the ecumenical movement.
The archbishop Dr Nathan Söderblom, an ecumenical forerunner and messenger of peace in war-torn Europe, challenged a deeply divided Christianity 100 years ago. Against all odds, the Stockholm Conference on Life and Work in 1925 gathered church leaders at a scale the world had not seen since Nicaea 1600 years earlier. And it did not end there, Tore Samuelsson, writes























