World Council of Churches Office of Communication Press Update 150 route de Ferney, P.O. Box 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland E-mail: media | |||
ECUMENICAL DELEGATION TO KOSOVO | |||
cf. WCC Press Update of 24 June 1999 Recent WCC photos from Kosovo An ecumenical delegation currently visiting Kosovo, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, will return on Monday, 5 July. The visit has been jointly organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Conference of European Churches (CEC) in consultation with the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate in Belgrade, the WCC member church in the region. WCC Church and Ecumenical Relations team executive secretary Huibert van Beek hopes that the visit will serve "to strengthen first-hand contacts with the churches in the region". The delegation is gathering information on the present situation in Kosovo, with a special focus on the security and rights of all peoples in the region, the nature of the planned civil administration, as well as future long-term ecumenical action. The ecumenical delegation is planning to meet, amongst others, with Christian and Muslim representatives in Pristina, with representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic church in Prizren, and with Serbian Orthodox representatives in Pec. It hopes to visit the Serbian Orthodox Decani Monastery; contacts with representatives of international organizations in Kosovo, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) are also planned. The delegation will discuss ecumenical humanitarian work in Kosovo with members of the WCC/Action by Churches Together (ACT) assessment team, currently in Pristina.
Members of the delegation are:
- Mr. Saso Klekovski, Macedonian Centre for International Cooperation The members of the delegation will be available to talk with journalists on their return.
The World Council of Churches is a fellowship of churches, now 336, in more than 100 countries in all continents from virtually all Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member church but works cooperatively with the WCC. The highest governing body is the assembly, which meets approximately every seven years. The WCC was formally inaugurated in 1948 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Its staff is headed by general secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany. |