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Vibrant opening worship held at Luyanó Presbyterian Reformed Church in Havana, Cuba marked the beginning of the executive committee meeting of the World Communion of Reformed Churches in Havana, Cuba from 7-13 May. The meeting was hosted by the Presbyterian Reformed Church in Cuba, a member church of the WCC.

Future collaborative work of the Roman Catholic Church with the WCC was the focus of the latest meeting of executives of their Joint Working Group in Geneva.

The 60th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women had “the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls” as its review theme.

“Ecclesiology and Ethics in Africa” is the theme of the latest issue of The Ecumenical Review, the quarterly journal of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The content includes principal presentations made at a June 2015 conference on Ecclesiology and Ethics: the State of Ecumenical Theology in Africa, held at the University of Western Cape in South Africa.

Pope Francis was presented two publications of the World Council of Churches on 24 February, at the close of a papal audience in the Vatican attended by members of the WCC’s Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME).

Ecumenical cooperation among Christian traditions is “an indispensable path to evangelization,” according to the 2013 apostolic exhortation from Pope Francis titled Evangelii Gaudium, or “the joy of the gospel.” The latest issue of the journal International Review of Mission analyses the encyclical’s teaching in light of two other documents on mission agreed by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism and the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.

Violence in the name of religion echoed in the distance, demanding a response, through the November 2015 meeting of the 25-member Executive Committee of the WCC in Bogis-Bossey and nearby Geneva, Switzerland as it planned the work of the Council in the coming years.

Commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23 was to have been the principal focus of the service of Sunday morning prayer on 15 November in the cathedral church of Saint-Pierre at the summit of Geneva’s old town. Following terror attacks in Beirut and Paris killing and wounding hundreds of civilians over the preceding days, the prayers of the Protestant Church of Geneva and the WCC Executive Committee took on a new dimension.

The WCC “is moving forward on our common pilgrimage, even as we face many challenges,” general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit affirmed in his semi-annual report to the WCC Executive Committee.

The Executive Committee, a 25-member governing body of the WCC, is meeting from 13 through 18 November at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland to consider a series of programmatic reports and proposals for the criteria to be used in priority setting amid the continuing work of the WCC.

It is raining. It is cold and windy. Autumn is in the air in northern Greece. We have just arrived at the Idomeni refugee camp in northern Greece, on the border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The fast-approaching winter poses as great a threat to the refugees as do the smugglers. In the worst case, winter means death.

Women are virtually invisible in news reporting on peace and security issues in nations experiencing conflict.

The possibility of a new economic framework is the chief focus of the newly published issue of The Ecumenical Review. Informed by years of ecumenical work on the relationship of poverty, wealth and ecology (including the proposal for a “greed line”), the 14 contributors offer an array of insights from specific contexts and religious standpoints – Dalits, South Africans, Latin Americans, Indigenous spirituality, feminist theology and non-Christian religions – into the values and structures that can create an “economy of life” for all.

The role of faith in promoting women’s human rights was the focus of an ecumenical training session held in Geneva, Switzerland, for representatives of faith-based organizations.

Meeting from 17 to 24 June, the newly reconstituted Commission on Faith and Order of the WCC has begun to define its principal trajectories for ecumenical study and common activity from 2015 until the next WCC Assembly in 2020.

The 2014 Annual Review of the World Council of Churches, now published and posted online, reports on the 2014 activities and projects of the council.

“Christianity in China” forms the theme of 14 articles published in the March 2015 issue of The Ecumenical Review, a quarterly journal of the WCC. According to guest editors Xiao Ping Sun and Dietrich Werner, “Although early issues of The Ecumenical Review devoted some attention to the developments in Chinese Christianity and the need for better understanding and dialogue, in recent years the journal has published few articles” describing expressions of faith in China.

How do the many contemporary issues and challenges about gender relate to the newest conceptions of mission? Does mission as currently conceived help women, for example, or speak adequately to such widespread phenomena as gender-related violence? Is there a “gender imperative” for mission?

Swedish communication specialist Marianne Ejdersten has recently been appointed as director for Communication at the WCC.

“Diakonia”, or the service ministry of the church, provides the theme for the October 2014 issue of a quarterly journal published by the WCC with Wiley Blackwell of Oxford.