WCC News: Diakonia in action: churches as a presence that stays

The world, as it presented itself in Kampala, Uganda, last February, was not an easy one to face. Humanitarian budgets are shrinking. Multilateral institutions are under pressure. In many countries, the space for civil society and faith-based advocacy is narrowing. It was against that backdrop - and with that weight - that churches, national forums, and ACT Alliance member organisations gathered from 25-27 February to work through a question none of them could answer alone: how do faith communities act together when the crises keep multiplying? ACT Uganda Forum members, church leaders, and other participants gathered to strengthen collaboration, shared learning, and ecumenical diakonia Photo: Martha Agwang – Communications and reporting officer Dann Church Aid (DCA) Uganda 12 March 2026 WCC brings global ecumenical perspective to Kampala The World Council of Churches (WCC) came to Kampala as more than an observer. Gloria Pua Ulloa, WCC programme executive for Ecumenical Diakonia, joined the Community of Practice on Religion and Development of ACT Alliance as a strategic interlocutor. Her task was to connect what was happening in Uganda to the larger ecumenical diakonia framework that the WCC and ACT Alliance are building together - one rooted in the conviction set out in the publication Called to Transformation: Ecumenical Diakonia: that diakonia is not something the church does alongside its mission. It is the mission. The Kampala gathering was part of a longer journey. The WCC and ACT Alliance have been advancing joint learning exchanges across regions - including in Indonesia and the Philippines - and this time the focus turned to Uganda and the African region, with the country's own experience of displacement and faith-based response at the centre of the work. Participants came from Indonesia, Latin America, Europe, and Africa, convened under the theme Ecumenical Diakonal Collaboration as an Answer to the Global Polycrisis. Uganda, though, was not simply the venue. The country's own experience - of hosting one of the largest refugee populations on the African continent, of churches stepping in where institutional capacity runs thin - gave the conversations a gravity that a conference room elsewhere could not have provided. Nakivale: when a pastoral letter reaches 8,000 people The clearest illustration came from outside the meeting altogether. A visit to the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in southwestern Uganda brought the theological discussions into immediate, human focus. One of the oldest refugee settlements in the world, Nakivale currently hosts approximately 190,000 refugees according to UN Refugee Agency (2025), the majority from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. ACT Forum Uganda members had invited the Most Rev. Dr Stephen Samuel Kaziimba Mugalu, archbishop of the Church of Uganda, to see the settlement for himself. He accepted. What he witnessed moved him to act - he wrote to every diocese in the country asking for solidarity with the refugee families. The response came quickly: cash and in-kind support that, according to ACT Forum Uganda, reached more than 8,000 people. The UN Refugee Agency Uganda recognised the Church of Uganda's contribution to the settlement response. None of that was accidental. ACT Forum Uganda functions as a genuine coordination structure - transparent about who can do what, and disciplined in its referrals. When a mental health team concludes that someone needs pastoral support rather than clinical intervention, they know who to call. The network holds because the relationships were built before the crisis arrived. Diakonia beyond charity: a prophetic and theological commitment It was this kind of coordination that Ulloa addressed directly during the panel discussion on the second day. Drawing on her experience in Latin America, she moved the conversation past the question of whether churches should act - in a room that included Anglican, Pentecostal, Catholic, and other voices, that question had already been settled. The harder question was how. The WCC's contribution, she argued, is to provide theological grounding for that “how:" to frame ecumenical diakonia not as a logistical arrangement, but as something the church is called to be. "Diakonia is the core identity of the church - and ecumenical unity is what gives that voice its transformative power," Ulloa said. Nakivale had already made that point. When churches coordinate - when trust has been built, when referral pathways are clear, when a single pastoral letter can mobilise a country's dioceses within days - they become something more than a collection of committed organisations. They become a presence that stays. Publication: Called to Transformation: Ecumenical Diakonia Ecumenical Diakonia and Sustainable Development 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