Healing wounded memories is an essential feature of the search for Christian unity, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches has told participants at a public seminar in Dublin, Ireland, on Monday.

Having just been through the most violent century in human history, humanity is entering the third millennium with lots of wounded memories, the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia said. "Christian unity will become meaningful both to Christians and non-Christians alike if the church takes the lead in healing and reconciling memories," he said.

Speaking at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Kobia proposed a model of reconciliation that is "not cheap" but entails "an attitude of repentance and a will for reparation".

Kobia affirmed that churches "are also called to initiate and promote acts of forgiveness in each place and in all places", for it is forgiveness that creates "the possibility of starting afresh and beginning something new".

To avoid the "inherent danger" that reconciliation be "trivialised and stripped of its fundamental value", Kobia said churches need to deal with it as both a theological and a social category. This "integrated approach" must take into account both the biblical understanding of reconciliation and forgiveness and the "sometimes too complex" nature of today's conflicts, he said.

The WCC General Secretary spent Sunday in Edinburgh. He told worshippers at Livingston Ecumenical Parish, the oldest ecumenical parish in Scotland, "One key to the search for unity is the discovery that Christ is present in each believer... and in each church.

"This awareness is the starting point for the whole ecumenical movement!" he proclaimed.

In spite of the unity that all Christians have in Christ - a unity "from which we cannot escape" - the church "has become divided into a myriad separate churches". According to Kobia, while many of the differences "enrich the body of Christ", others are "destructive divisions".

He cited among such divisions cases of churches refusing to recognise baptisms performed by others, competing to launch mission programmes, the duplication of programmes and work and most notoriously, the refusal of some members to share the eucharist with one another.

While divisions "contradict the nature of the church itself as the one body of Christ", churches are called to recognise that "no church has a monopoly on Christ's presence and power," Kobia declared.

Kobia returned to the theme of reconciliation and collaboration between churches in a meditation during worship at Edgehill Theological College in Belfast, Ireland, on Tuesday.

Recalling the response to the tsunami that hit Asia and parts of Africa in December 2004, he highlighted that churches in the affected countries were among the first to move in to care for the people in partnership with people of other faiths. He also praised churches abroad for their readiness to support efforts at rehabilitation and reconstruction.

"The message was loud and clear: 'If one member suffers, all suffer together with it'," Kobia said, quoting the apostle Paul's words. "At all times, not just in times of such a tragedy, we need to recognise that we belong to each other," he added.

The WCC General Secretary's visit to the UK and Ireland will wrap up on 4 May.