wfn.org | Farewell for Brunswick Bishop Krause

["Frank Imhoff" <franki@elca.org>]

Ecumenism - "Giving a Voice to the Voiceless"

BRUNSWICK, Germany/GENEVA, 8 February 2002 (LWI) -Political and church
representatives gathered in Brunswick Cathedral January 28 to mark the
retirement of Dr. Christian Krause, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church
in Brunswick. The 62-year-old former general secretary of the Kirchentag,
the
German Protestant church conference, was elected head of the Brunswick
church
in 1993.

Rev. Peter Kollmar, one of the church's senior representatives, praised the
retiring bishop's commitment to the congregations and to dialogue with
representatives from the local political scene, business and industry and
trade unions. Krause had put the Brunswick church on the ecumenical map. He
had given the region a soul, Kollmar added.

Krause also made his mark in the ecumenical movement. As president of the
Lutheran World Federation (LWF) he had managed to connect very different
worlds and understood his various offices as "complementing each other in
service to the unity of the Lutheran churches." His name would forever
remain
linked with the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of
Justification on 31 October 1999 in Augsburg, Germany, Kollmar said.

Roman Catholic Bishop Josef Homeyer from Hildesheim encouraged Krause to
continue to work on ecumenical relations. For Krause, ecumenism is more
than
just enhancing understanding among the churches. It is the universal
dimension of "giving a voice to the voiceless."

The leading bishop of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany
(VELKD), Hans Christian Knuth, referred in his greeting to Krause's earlier
work in refugee relief in Africa. The culture minister of Lower Saxony,
Renate Juergens-Pieper, a member of the Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands - SPD, thanked Krause for his contribution toward the
establishment of a regional development agency for southeast Lower Saxony.

Krause, elected LWF President at the 1997 LWF Ninth Assembly in Hong Kong,
China, will remain in office until the July 2003 Tenth Assembly in
Winnipeg,
Canada. He continues serving as president of the board of the Church
Development Service - Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED) and
chairperson
of the Luther Center in Wittenberg. His successor Provost Dr. Friedrich
Weber, 52, from Wiesbaden, was elected last year, and takes up office in
March.

The Brunswick church has around 450,000 members. It joined the LWF in 1947.

(Based on a Protestant news service - Evangelischer Pressedienst-epd-
report)

(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran
tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund (Sweden), the LWF now has 133 member
churches in 73 countries representing over 60.5 million of the 64.3 million
Lutherans worldwide. The LWF acts on behalf of its member churches in areas
of common interest such as ecumenical relations, theology, humanitarian
assistance, human rights, communication, and the various aspects of mission
and development work. Its secretariat is located in Geneva, Switzerland.)

[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the information service of the
Lutheran
World Federation (LWF). Unless specifically noted, material presented does
not represent positions or opinions of the LWF or of its various units.
Where
the dateline of an article contains the notation (LWI), the material may be
freely reproduced with acknowledgment.]

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