wfn.org | WCC Celebrates 50 Years of Ecumenical Work

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10-September-1998 
98289 
 
    World Council of Churches Celebrates 50 Years 
    of Ecumenical Work 
 
    by Stephen Brown 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
GENEVA-The World Council of Churches - the world's largest ecumenical 
organization - is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding. 
 
    The WCC was founded on August 23, 1948, at an inaugural assembly in the 
Dutch city of Amsterdam.  On Aug. 24, staff at the Ecumenical Center in 
Geneva, where the WCC's central offices are located, took part in a special 
service to mark the 50 years of the ecumenical movement. 
 
    The main celebrations to mark the WCC's jubilee will begin on Sept. 19 
in Amsterdam,  culminating at a service of recommitment by churches to the 
WCC and the ecumenical movement on Dec.13 at the WCC's Eighth Assembly in 
Harare, Zimbabwe.  Each of the countries which have hosted a WCC Assembly 
will also hold special celebrations: the United States (1954); India 
(1961); Sweden (1968); Kenya (1975); Canada (1983); and Australia (1991). 
 
    An ecumenical service will be held at Geneva's Protestant cathedral on 
Sept. 20, followed two days later by a round-table discussion which will 
include the president of the Swiss Confederation, Flavio Cotti; Archbishop 
Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who is also a former WCC 
staff  member; Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; 
Estela Carlotto, president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, 
Argentina; and Georges Khodr, metropolitan of Mount Lebanon, Patriarchate 
of Antioch and All the East. 
 
    When the WCC was founded in 1948, it had 147 member churches, most of 
them Anglican and Protestant from Western Europe and North America.  Today 
the organization has 332 Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox member churches 
from all parts of the world.  The Roman Catholic Church is not a WCC 
member, although it cooperates closely with the WCC on several key issues. 

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