WCC News: 2026 International Peace Convocation to take place in Korea

An International Ecumenical Peace Convocation will convene 9-13 September in Seoul, Republic of Korea, under the theme “World Peace and the Korean Peninsula: The Church as a Community of Healing, Reconciliation, and Peacebuilding.” Participants pray during a service for peace and reunification between South and North Korea at St. Stephan Church in Karlsruhe as part of the World Council of Churches' 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany. The assembly takes place 31 August 31 to 8 September 2022 under the theme "Christ's Love Moves the World to Reconciliation and Unity." Photo: Mike DuBose/WCC 07 September 2026 The convocation is being co-organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC), Christian Conference of Asia, and National Council of Churches in Korea. This convocation is being prepared as a shared ecumenical journey, bringing together churches worldwide to reflect on their calling toward just peace in an era of intensifying war and conflict, connecting the realities of global conflict zones with the Korean Peninsula to explore new pathways for peace, reconciliation, hope, and international solidarity. Sub-themes during the convocation will include “Just Peace and the Vocation of the Church,” and workshop topics will include “Church and Civil Society Peacebuilding in Conflict Zones,” “Role of the Ecumenical Community as Peace Mediator, “Youth's Role in Peacebuilding,” and more.  The conference will conclude with the adoption of a “2026 Peace Declaration,” as well as visits to Korean democracy historic sites. The WCC’s representation in the convocation will be led by WCC general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay and the director of the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs Peter Prove. The WCC general secretary will preach at the opening session. During their visit, the WCC general secretary and CCIA director will also meet with the new prime minister of the Republic of Korea, and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea. After the convocation, a Demilitarized Zone Peace Pilgrimage will take place on 12 September. Also, after the convocation, the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea General Assembly and the Presbyterian Church of Korea General Assembly will take place.  The National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK) See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland

WCC News: Season of Creation 2026 opens with living water and a new feast

Rivers that carry plastic to the sea. Wells turning salt as the ocean rises. Taps that run dry where children walk far for water. These were prayed for on 1 September, at the service opening the 2026 Season of Creation under the theme "Living Water" from Ezekiel 47. "We are surrounded by water," said Rev. James Bhagwan, general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, "but something within humanity has become dry." 15 May 2023, Kakuma, Turkana County, Kenya: A woman from the Turkana community at Nakoyo stops to wash her hands as she works at an LWF-supported farm where the community is learning how to grow diverse crops in order to better sustain themselves as a changing climate and extended dry seasons has made their traditional livelihoods of keeping livestock increasingly difficult. The Turkana – a traditionally pastoralist community – is native to the area, and forms the host community for the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in the nearby Kakuma refugee camp. Photo: LWF/Albin Hillert 04 September 2026 The date carried something new. In April 2026 the Consultation on Common Texts added the Feast of Creation in Christ to the Revised Common Lectionary, the shared calendar of readings many churches follow. The first feast added since 1983, it may be kept on 1 September. Dr Louk Andrianos, World Council of Churches (WCC) consultant for Care for Creation, Sustainability, and Climate Justice, opened the service from Crete. He welcomed the fellowship to celebrate it "as a feast of creation in Christ for the first time." Bhagwan preached on John 7, where Jesus stands in a crowded festival and speaks about thirst. He carried that thirst home. The Pacific, he said, is "a sea of islands that connect by the great ocean" – its rivers carry plastic, its communities face saltwater intrusion, drought, and unsafe water. The ocean that sustains Pacific life "is being treated as a dumping ground, a highway for militarization and a resource to be exploited." What he offered was not a programme. "Jesus does not offer bottled water. He offers relationship." The ecological crisis, he argued, is not only a crisis around us but a spiritual crisis within us, and the season begins "not with our activity, but with Christ’s invitation." He will spend part of it on a paddleboard, circling Viti Levu, collecting plastic. Abigayle Bolado, WCC programme executive for Young People in the Ecumenical Movement, led the intercessions with a representative of the Laudato Si’ Movement, and the invitation turned specific. They prayed for reefs bleached by warming seas, for whales navigating nylon, for rivers dammed without the consent of those who live beside them, for sacred waters engineered away to supply distant cities and data centres. Others prayed from Nairobi, Beirut, Sami country in northern Finland, and southern Africa. His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I issued his own message that same day, for the Day of Prayer for the Protection of the Natural Environment, an observance his patriarchate began in 1989, from which the season grew. He called ecological responsibility "a categorical imperative." The Copernicus Climate Change Service recorded July 2026 as the second warmest measured, 1.47 degrees Celsius above the 1850–1900 average. Writing on 26 August, WCC general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay said churches are "called to become part of the river’s healing, not to stand at the bank and watch." The season runs to 4 October, when a closing event will mark its end. It is one leg of the Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action (2025–2034), launched in Johannesburg in 2025. "Each stroke can become a prayer," Bhagwan said. WCC to join Season of Creation prayer amid climate extremes (News Release, 26 August 2026) Patriarch Bartholomew calls for global ecological solidarity (News Release, 01 September 2026) Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action Season of Creation resources September 1st: Prayer Service for the Opening of Season of Creation See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa.  Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland

WCC news: WCC leaves COP17 in Ulaanbaatar with the same land question

For 11 days in Ulaanbaatar, the World Council of Churches (WCC) made one argument in five different events: degraded land will not be restored without the communities who already hold it. It closed on 25 August, with churches in front of investors, then farmers. Group picture with participants of the WCC side event on Agroecology and Farmer-managed natural regeneration. Photo: Mongolian Presss Agency 4 September 2026 The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, the treaty to address land degradation and drought, met in Mongolia from 17 to 28 August for its 17th Conference of the Parties (COP). On 22 August the WCC held an official side event on faith communities as partners in land restoration. Dinesh Suna, WCC programme executive for Land, Water, and Food, presented the Living Planet Monitor, the WCC's land restoration evidence base, which he edits. The argument for restoration, he said, is only as strong as the data behind it. The morning of 25 August began in the Business for Land Pavilion. Faith organizations hold roughly 8 percent of the world's habitable land, according to FaithInvest, a figure that makes faith communities a formidable force in land restoration. Faith communities and religious groups invest according to their values, and much of the land held by faith-based organizations needs restoration. Investors, meanwhile, are looking for credible places to put restoration money. So far, neither side has had much of a route to the other. Suna set out what churches can bring: faith impact investment. Churches, in most cases, formulate their investment policy on theological and ethical principles. They lead by example, as they screen out fossil fuels, weapons, exploitation, and corruption. They invest in renewable energy, sustainable farming, land restoration, and water. Then they measure what changed for communities and ecosystems, not only for the balance sheet. The conditions were clear. No faith washing, which means using a church's good name to make a business position look ethical without the church having shaped it. Instead, free, prior and informed consultation. The WCC works with FaithInvest with one hand, Suna said, and supports court cases related to fossil fuel companies, prioritizing protecting children, with the other. The door is open, and the polluter still pays. Later that morning, the WCC and World Vision International held a second session on agro-ecology, farming that works with ecological processes, and farmer-managed natural regeneration. Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith, WCC president from North America, gave the keynote from Matthew 5:6. "It is not enough for us to invite and profess righteousness; we must make actual investments through our actions . . . Land restoration is based on a spiritual principle of righteousness and love for land as an extension of loving the Creator, ourselves, and all of Creation." Prof. Amos Pui Kuen Tai of The Chinese University of Hong Kong gave the second keynote, on farmer managed natural regeneration and agro-ecology. The panel that followed was built on lived experience: Irene Ojuok, who leads World Vision's farmer-managed natural regeneration scale-up across Africa, Mongolian practitioners from Green Asia Network and World Vision, scientists from VRM Biologic, and students from Hong Kong and Sweden. The faith communities have issued two statements including a Talanoa Dialogue message, addressing land degradation and hope for land restoration, which acknowledges the 1.3 billion US dollars mobilized at COP17 as a meaningful step, but it is a drop in the ocean, compared with the estimated 355 billion US dollars per year needed for land restoration and drought resilience through 2030. Two more conferences ahead. The UN biodiversity conference will meet in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 30 October, and the UN climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9 to 20 November. Land, biodiversity, and climate are one crisis in three conventions, and the WCC will carry the same case to both. It belongs to the Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action (2025–34), which asks churches for ecological metanoia: a change of heart and mind, repentance included, deep enough to change what they do with what they own. Understand a bit more Farmer-managed natural regeneration: Beneath many degraded fields lie living stumps and root systems, sometimes called an underground forest. Protected and pruned rather than cleared or burned, they regrow alongside the crops without nurseries, seedlings, or irrigation. The land restoration practice was developed in Niger in the 1980s and has since spread across the Sahel. WCC tells COP17 that land restoration needs faith partners (News Release, 26 August 2026) Care for creation and climate justice Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action FaithInvest, Why work with faiths See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa.  Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland

WCC news: WCC leads climate justice workshops at ECEN Assembly

The World Council of Churches (WCC) led workshops at the Assembly of the European Christian Environmental Network (ECEN) in Brussels, Belgium, held from 29 August to 2 September. The sessions focused on the Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action (2025–2034) — the WCC's ten-year commitment, launched in 2025.  Photo: ECEN 03 September 2026 Rev. Henrik Grape, WCC senior advisor for Care for Creation, Sustainability, and Climate Justice, asked around 50 participants from churches across Europe what the decade should mean in their own parishes and countries. Grape said: “European churches and faith communities have a long history of acting for climate justice, and today this is more urgent than ever before. The wildfires, droughts, and heatwaves, and the resulting excess mortality across the continent in recent months, have made it clear that we are in a very serious situation. The inertia to act, and the way these events are being reported without any connection to climate change, leave churches with a responsibility to step forward – to be prophetic when being prophetic means speaking truth to power. I hope that we will see European churches taking a strong profile in the Decade of Climate Justice.” ECEN began within the Conference of European Churches (CEC), a platform for European churches on environmental issues. Now freestanding, it pursues the same goals alongside the WCC's climate justice programme. This was its first assembly under that structure, held at the Franciscan Training Centre, Maison Notre-Dame du Chant d'Oiseau. During the workshops, participants called for rooting the decade in congregations through theological reflection and shared stories of climate impacts worldwide, alongside practical guidance for congregations and individuals and closer cooperation with civil society partners, including advocacy toward EU institutions. Some participants also raised concern that certain European churches are stepping back from climate action, as growing military spending pushes the ecological agenda into the background. Against this backdrop, participants named a guiding theme for the decade: “Peace on Earth and Peace with Earth.”  The assembly concluded as the global church enters the Season of Creation (1 September–4 October), this year themed “Living Water.” Season of Creation 2026: Living Water  Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action At European Christian Environmental Network Assembly, Rev. Dr Kenneth Mtata reflects on climate justice (News Release, 1 September 2023) See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland

WCC news: New webpage invites churches to join WCC Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation, and Unity

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has opened a new webpage dedicated to the Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation, and Unity, offering churches, ecumenical organizations, and communities a comprehensive collection of resources for walking, praying, and acting together. Photo: Ivars Kupcis/WCC 2 September 2026 The webpage presents the pilgrimage as a spiritually grounded journey of encounter and mutual transformation, building on the WCC’s Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace, launched in 2013, and expanded at the WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe in 2022. At the heart of the new resource is a see–reflect-act methodology, encouraging communities to engage honestly with their contexts, reflect through Scripture and prayer, and respond through concrete action. The webpage also introduces practical tools, theological resources, case studies, and approaches for pilgrimage encounters, including listening circles, context walks, justice mapping, public witness, healing liturgies, and peace tables. The pilgrimage emphasizes a theology of companionship, inviting participants to move beyond observation towards relationships marked by mutuality, dignity, listening, and sustained commitment. Explore the Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation, and Unity See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland