WCC NEWS: GINGKO Interfaith Fellowship Retreat explores hospitality as path to deeper encounter

The GINGKO Interfaith Fellowship Retreat 2026 brought together scholars, religious leaders, and practitioners from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim backgrounds to explore the theme “Hospitality as a Means to Deepen the Encounter.” Photo: GINGKO 16 September 2026 Beginning on 31 August on Büyükada, one of Istanbul’s Princes’ Islands, the retreat invited participants to consider hospitality not simply as the act of welcoming another person, but as a path towards deeper encounter, sustained relationship-building and healing. This reflection also embraced those who have no secure home or community to return to, people uprooted by migration, forced displacement, exile, poverty, or other forms of hardship, for whom hospitality can become a profound expression of dignity, belonging and human solidarity. Participants reflected on what it means both to offer hospitality and to allow oneself to be hosted, as individuals, within faith communities and in academic life, and on how such experiences can transform the ways in which people of different religious traditions listen to, learn from, and engage one another.  The programme brought together personal storytelling, academic reflection, scriptural engagement, visits to places of worship, shared meals and opportunities for discussion and reflection. From the beginning, participants were invited to bring their own experiences into the conversation by sharing personal stories of hospitality. Throughout the retreat, space was given to the prayer rhythms of the different traditions, allowing hospitality to be experienced as part of the daily life of the fellowship as well as its central subject of reflection. Photo: GINGKO Pilgrimage and shared sacred space The morning of 2 September began with a walking pilgrimage to the Monastery of St George Koudounas (Aya Yorgi) on Büyükada, a sacred site revered by Christians and Muslims alike and long associated with pilgrimage, prayer, and hope. Situated on one of the highest points of the island, overlooking the Sea of Marmara and Istanbul beyond, the monastery offered the fellows a vivid experience of the retreat’s central theme of hospitality. For generations, people of different religious backgrounds have made their way there with reverence for the divine, bringing prayers and petitions for healing, blessing, and well-being. The encounter invited the fellows to reflect on the capacity of sacred places to draw people together across religious boundaries and to preserve memories of devotion and shared human longing. Later, the fellows were received by His Eminence Metropolitan Dimitrios of the Princes’ Islands at the headquarters of the Metropolis on Büyükada. Metropolitan Dimitrios spoke about the long history of lived relations between Christians and Muslims on the islands, as well as the historic and continuing presence of the Greek Orthodox community. He reflected on the responsibility entrusted to every human being to make fruitful use of the gifts received from God. “It depends on each one of us how we choose to invest, spiritually and practically, the talents the Lord has given us, for the benefit of the church and of the world,” he said. Metropolitan Dimitrios also recalled the historic presence of other religious communities on the Princes’ Islands, particularly Jewish and Armenian communities, and reflected on the profound demographic changes that have affected them over time.  Photo: GINGKO Encountering Istanbul’s religious heritage Visits to some of Istanbul’s many historic mosques offered opportunities to experience the richness of the city’s Islamic religious, architectural, and cultural heritage, and to consider the ways in which places of worship carry both the spiritual life and the collective memory of communities across generations. The programme also included a visit to the Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews and the adjoining Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul. There, the fellows learned more about the centuries-old Jewish presence in Anatolia, including the longstanding Romaniote presence and the later, particularly significant Sephardic presence in the Ottoman lands, as well as about the present-day life and challenges of the Jewish community in Turkey. These encounters added a historical dimension to the retreat’s discussions on hospitality, showing that communities do not encounter one another only in the present, but within landscapes shaped by centuries of coexistence, movement, loss, memory, and cultural exchange. The final day also included a shared Friday evening meal marking the beginning of Shabbat for the Jewish fellows. Sharing a table became an expression of attentiveness to one another’s religious rhythms and traditions, and a concrete gesture of the hospitality that had provided the central thread of the gathering. The fellowship brought together people whose work encompasses theology and religious studies, interreligious dialogue, education, peacebuilding, religious leadership, human rights, and public life, drawing on academic and community experience from different parts of the world. The diversity of their contexts made hospitality not simply a subject for discussion, but something to be practised and negotiated within the life of the fellowship itself. “Through the collaboration between the WCC Programme for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation and the GINGKO Interfaith Fellowship, we seek to create spaces where scholarly reflection, lived faith and personal encounter can enrich one another. By bringing the WCC’s ecumenical experience and the perspectives of churches living in diverse religious contexts into conversation with GINGKO’s commitment to sustained interfaith learning and encounter, the fellowship gives concrete form to this shared vision. Experiences such as this retreat remind us that interreligious encounter is never static: it is shaped by the particular histories, memories, and lived realities of each place. Being attentive to these different contexts can deepen mutual understanding and build relationships of trust. For me personally, coming from Greece and with family roots in these lands, this retreat was also a pilgrimage in the footsteps of my ancestors and a moving encounter with the enduring legacy of the religious communities of Türkiye, whose rich material, spiritua, and cultural heritage calls all of us to remembrance, care and reconciliation,” said Prof. Angeliki Ziaka, WCC programme executive for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation. 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