Executive committee forms source of hope for WCC leader

In his report, WCC general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay spoke of numerous trips to member churches around the world, where he was able to provide support and assistance in often difficult situations and to emphasize the importance of cooperation within the World Council of Churches. The report also highlighted the breadth and diversity of the WCC's program work. Despite a very limited budget, our staff people do a great job of connecting people worldwide on the faith and ethical issues that concern us in today's world.

The executive committee, with guests from the local churches in Cyprus, dressed in black to draw attention to the highly relevant global issue of sexualized violence as a World Council of Churches as part of the “Thursdays in Black” campaign.

While we always dealt with the day-to-day business in the afternoon sessions, such as the budget for 2025 and the programme work, the mornings were dedicated to the situation in Cyprus. Since the Turkish invasion of 1974, the country has been divided. Ambassador Andreas Kakouris from the Foreign Ministry explained the political situation to us. There are still 40,000 Turkish troops in the Turkish sector of the island, which has not been recognized as a sovereign state by any country other than Turkey. UN peace efforts to achieve reunification have failed so far.

Our host Metropolitan Vassilios, who is also president of the World Council of Churches for Eastern Orthodox Churches, gave us a vivid insight into the wounds that the division continues to inflict to this day. Every family still has a family member who has been missing since the invasion, in Vassilios' family, for example, an uncle and a cousin. The monastery of St Barnabas was built up by three monks who, during his time as a vicar there, were also very influential in his spiritual development. They had to leave the monastery in 1976, two years after the invasion, and were not allowed to take anything with them. In the museum next to the church center in Paralimni, where our meetings take place, there is a video that shows the tears of one of the old monks. You don't forget that. And Christina, the director of the museum, told me after the tour that even the wildest group of young visitors falls completely silent after seeing this video. I am not surprised. I was also very touched and moved by it, and it expresses more than many words the pain that the division of the country still causes the Cypriots today.

The situation of Christians in the Turkish part was an important subject of our discussions. Many churches have been converted into mosques. Permits must be obtained for church services. They are often delayed or refused. In 2024, 52 out of 100 applications have been approved so far, and in November only two out of 15. One Sunday, we profited from one of these permits and crossed the border into the Turkish part of the island to celebrate a service with the Christians who have remained there. We also visited the monastery of St Barnabas, which we had heard so much about and which is now used as a museum. In a statement that the public issues committee proposed to the executive committee, we appealed to the Turkish-Cypriot authorities to abandon their restrictive attitude towards requests for access to and worship in churches and Christian holy places in the area under their control, and to ensure free access to these sites.

Every morning we celebrated the service in a different one of the many old churches in Cyprus, many of them in monasteries. The Orthodox liturgy, together with the wall paintings and icons, in ancient walls, allowed us to share in the richness of the Orthodox tradition. Today, during the liturgy of the service, I recognized Orthodox chants that have also been incorporated into our liturgies in Germany – such as the Orthodox Kyrie or the “Hagios ho Theos.”

The visit to the Orthodox Archbishop of Cyprus Georgios III, for whose inauguration I had already travelled to Cyprus two years ago with the general secretary, gave us the opportunity to express our heartfelt thanks for the hospitality of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus and to exchange gifts.

The demarcation line between the two separate parts of the country runs right through the centre of Nicosia. The deputy mayor of Nicosia showed us where the line runs from the roof of the town hall. In the Turkish part, you can see a church that has been converted into a mosque. The new town hall is so large that it will have enough capacity for the administration of a reunited Nicosia. A nice sign that people have not given up hope. Of course, I talked about how little we dared to hope that Germany would one day be reunited.

A highlight for me – despite the heavy subject matter – was the discussion with members of our executive committee about the situation in their own countries. Dr Audeh Quawas spoke of the severe daily restrictions faced by Palestinians in the occupied territories, but also of the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. Healthcare (Quawas is a doctor) has almost completely collapsed. Bishop Susan Johnson of the Lutheran Church in Canada spoke of the terrible history of discrimination against Canada's Indigenous peoples. For many decades, their children were taken away from them and put into children's homes where they were supposed to be cured of “being Indian.” The result: the destruction of families, but also of souls.

Dr Kenneth Mtata spoke about the situation of violence and the ever-increasing hunger in Sudan. Ten million people are on the run. Due to the wars in Ukraine and in Israel/Palestine/Gaza/Lebanon, the associated catastrophe is receiving little attention and people are receiving far too little help. We, as the World Council of Churches, have sent a delegation there and are trying to help. Archbishop Dr Vicken Aykazian spoke about the situation in Armenia after the violent conquest of Nagorny-Karabakh (Arzak) by Azerbaijan. More than 120,000 people fled to Armenia in 48 hours. Rev. Mariela Alejandra Pereyra, church president of the Lutheran Church in Argentina, spoke about the impoverishment of many people since the inauguration of the new Argentinean president Javier Milei. Hearing about all these difficult situations could make one despair. But I felt differently. That the so often forgotten stories are being told, that the World Council of Churches and others are not resigning themselves to this situation, but are taking a stand through the power of prayer, mutual support, and commitment to justice and, where possible, through public intervention, was a source of hope for me.

One of the statements we adopted at the end of the meeting addressed the results of the climate conference that had just ended in Baku and the biodiversity conference in Colombia. The importance of these issues was brought home to us by the testimony of a participant in our meeting, Rev. Dr Semisi Touragavou from the Fiji Islands. He reported how global warming has already caused sea levels to rise so significantly that some villages and eventually entire islands will have to be evacuated. People are resisting because they do not want to leave their ancestral homeland. Every centimeter of sea level rise makes it more difficult to obtain drinking water because the water becomes more and more saline. If we don't finally make the fight against global warming a top political priority, many more people who have contributed nothing to causing climate change will suffer bitterly. We as individuals can make our small contribution in some areas. However, the decisive steps must come from politics.

In addition to adopting the budget for 2025 and the program work, we have adopted several statements on the world situation – on protecting the endangered climate and declining biodiversity in nature, on the war in Gaza, Lebanon and the whole Middle East region, the war in Ukraine, the 50th anniversary of the division of Cyprus and how to overcome it, the situation in Sudan, the dire conditions in Haiti, and the importance of multilateral cooperation in the world community. The daily work from morning to evening was worth it. We come from completely different contexts and also with different perspectives. But we listen to each other with the willingness to really learn something new through mutual conversation. In the end, the miracle happened once again that we adopted all our resolutions and statements by consensus. At the end of each decision-making process, when I asked to show the cards, I no longer saw a single blue card (meaning “cold” – I can't go along with this), but only orange cards (warm – I agree!). In the small, I experienced what I also hope for in the large: a culture of conversation in which we respect each other, even in our diversity, and come to common results on the basis of our common Christian basic orientations, so that in the end sister- and brotherhood and even friendship set the tone.

It is always a pleasure to work together with my vice-chairpersons Rev. Merlyn Hyde Riley, general secretary of the Baptist Union in Jamaica; Archbishop Vicken Aykazian, representative of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Washington; and our general secretary, the South African Pastor Dr Jerry Pillay, in the leadership team.

After this session of the executive committee, I know all the more why I took on the task of chairing it and why the time you devote to it is so worthwhile.

WCC executive committee radiates hope amid world’s darkness (WCC news release, 28 November 2024)

Photo gallery of the WCC executive committee meeting in Cyprus