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