What do you see as the main priorities for the WCC in the coming seven years? What are your own personal hopes for this period?
We are at the stage of setting priorities for the life of the Council. The Assembly has laid down basic guidelines, and based on them, a new programme structure will be presented to the coming central committee meeting.
Precisely at this time of reduced resources, the large number of challenges makes it difficult to determine priorities, particularly also because needs vary from region to region. But we need to concentrate resources on what is most essential and on what the WCC can uniquely do to assist the churches.
In practice, however, some issues have a permanent place on the WCC agenda: the search for new ways of understanding and cooperation between the churches in a religious situation that is increasingly plural and dangerously divided; tireless striving for peace; the quest for justice in international relations; unity, both in matters of doctrine and of ethics; promoting effective inclusion of all persons in the life of the churches; and a deeper and more holistic understanding of mission.
Ecumenical bodies are experiencing difficulties at the global and regional levels. What do you see as the main challenges facing the ecumenical movement and the WCC in the current period?
In parallel with the trend to globalization, we also at present have the phenomena of fragmentation and individualism. There is today a greater religious diversity, even within Christianity, than when our forebears saw the need for an ecumenical movement. Moreover, considerable forces are driving hitherto ecumenically committed churches outside traditional ecumenical organizations.
Therefore, these trends, and the very diversity in our world that is at once increasingly globalized and conflict-ridden, cannot but make ecumenism all the more necessary and urgent. The greatest challenge, however, consists in keeping alive in our churches their passion for ecumenism and in finding creative ways for their renewal on our common ecumenical journey.
This interview will be published on the eve of the first WCC central committee meeting. What is your message to the WCC member churches as you start your mandate?
The ecumenical vision is a thing of beauty that has immense attraction. It holds together legitimate diversity and commitment to unity. It is thus in itself a powerful witness in our globalized world that excludes people in so many ways. There are multitudes of hungry people, both physically and spiritually. We owe it to them to give credible witness to the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15), a hope that comes to us from Christ. Our calling is not to lose heart but to persevere. The ecumenical movement is going through a time of change, but it is enduringly valid because its inspiration is the Triune God.
