.png "English"){kind=small}
World Council of Churches
WCC, Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue release “Serving a Wounded World” document
The World Council of Churches (WCC)
and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) have
released a joint document, “Serving a Wounded World in Interreligious
Solidarity: A Christian Call to Reflection and Action During COVID-19
and Beyond.” Its purpose is to encourage churches and Christian
organizations to reflect on the importance of interreligious solidarity
in a world wounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The document offers a Christian basis for
interreligious solidarity that can inspire and confirm the impulse to
serve a world wounded not only by COVID-19 but also by many other
wounds.
The publication is also designed to be useful to
practitioners of other religions, who have already responded to COVID-19
with similar thoughts based on their own traditions.
The document recognizes the current context of the
pandemic as a time for discovering new forms of solidarity for
rethinking the post-COVID-19 world. Comprised of five sections, the
document reflects on the nature of a solidarity sustained by hope and
offers a Christian basis for interreligious solidarity, a few key
principles and a set of recommendations on how reflection on solidarity
can be translated into concrete and credible action.
WCC interim general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca
reflected that interreligious dialogue is vital to healing and caring
for one another on a global level. “In the face of the COVID-19
pandemic, the human family is facing together an unprecedented call to
protect one another, and to heal our communities,” he
said. “Interreligious dialogue not only helps clarify the principles of
our own faith and our identity as Christians, but also opens our
understanding of the challenges—and creative solutions—others may have.”
Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, president of the
PCID, reflected that Christian service and solidarity in a wounded world
have been part of agenda of the PCID and WCC since last year. The
COVID-19 pandemic pressed the project into action as “a timely
ecumenical and interreligious response,” he said, adding that “the
pandemic has exposed the woundedness and fragility of our world,
revealing that our responses must be offered in an inclusive solidarity,
open to followers of other religious traditions and people of good
will, given the concern for the entire human family.”
The document is the latest to be co-produced by the WCC
and the PCID following the publication of “Education for Peace in a
Multi-Religious World: A Christian Perspective" in May 2019.
