WCC FEATURE: The ecumenical spirit at Calvin’s Cathedral

Few moments in the early history of the World Council of Churches have embodied and conveyed the spirit of the modern ecumenical movement as vividly as the service celebrated at Saint Peter’s Cathedral, Geneva, 20 February 1946, less than one year after the end of World War II. Gathered at Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Geneva, February 2021. Photo: WCC 24 February 2021 By Odair Pedroso Mateus* Few moments in the early history of the World Council of Churches have embodied and conveyed the spirit of the modern ecumenical movement as vividly as the service celebrated at Saint Peter’s Cathedral, Geneva, 20 February 1946, less than one year after the end of World War II. Last Saturday, 20 February, I arrived half an hour earlier at the cathedral to attend a prayer service in remembrance of that event. Seventy-five years later day-by-day, I wanted to take a few moments before the service to pay a new visit to a marble tablet on the cathedral wall commemorating “the first ecumenical service after the Second World War.” The marble tablet was inaugurated ten years later, in April 1956. The idea of commemorating the 10th anniversary of the 1946 service was initiated by the Geneva banker Gustave Hentsch. Together with another Geneva Protestant banker, Georges Lombard, Hentsch pioneered the establishment in 1946 of the Ecumenical Loan Fund, what is today the non-profit, micro-finance foundation ECLOF International.   The marble tablet commemorating the first ecumenical worship after World War II. Photo: WCC After the name and origin of the celebrants of 1946, most of them from countries that had been at war the previous years, the marble tablet gives two biblical references. The first, certainly addressed to the churches whose divisions did not help to prevent the reign of violence, is Luke 15:7: “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” The second biblical reference is from the letter that from those days to the present has played a foundational role in the biblical-theological case for the search for unity: “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us (…) that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace…” (Ephesians 2: 14-15).       As I crossed the central aisle of the nave, listening to the melancholic sound of the pandemic’s silence, I dreamed. I was now a young theological student, selected to be a steward in that 1946 meeting of the Provisional Committee of the future World Council of Churches. I had just heard the exciting news that in October of that year the Provisional Committee would open a school of ecumenical formation in an old château 20 kilometres away from Geneva. During a coffee break, I had heard that in a recent visit to the place, Robert Mackie and Visser ‘t Hooft had found that “the disorganised old house with its innumerable pictures of Napoleon” did not seem very inviting. However, the idea that the place, called Bossey, could look gorgeous “in the spring and summer” had finally convinced them. Then in my dream, I suddenly held in my hands a yellowish page of my steward’s diary. It smelled like locked rooms of old libraries. It was dated “Febr 20, 1946, 23:45”:        “My steward duty tonight took me first of all from the Hotel des Bergues to Saint Peter’s Cathedral. Some delegates attending a reception offered by the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches at the Hotel had to find their way to the Cathedral for the service, which would start at 20:30. At Saint Peter’s, my task was to make sure that in a packed church all delegates from around the world who are attending the meeting of the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches  would receive the order of worship. The long entrance procession – I counted no less than forty people - was led by Rev. Charles Cellerier, the moderator of the Venerable Company of Pastors of Geneva founded by Calvin, and by the photogenic Rev. Marc Boegner, the president of the French Protestant Federation. The WCC has gathered for many ecumenical prayer services at the cathedral through the years. Here, representatives of churches worldwide gathered for a service of celebration to mark the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches on 17 June 2018. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC Boegner and Cellerier were followed the Lord-Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, who conducted the service, and Metropolitan Germanos of Thyatira. Metropolitan Germanos was in charge of the biblical readings. He could have celebrated thirty-five years of ecumenical engagement together with his old friend John Mott. The procession included Archimandrite Cassian of Mont Athos and the renowned Prof. Georges Florovsky of the Institut Saint Serge in Paris. Since Calvin’s days, the Reformed in French-speaking Switzerland and the French Huguenots, following an ancient Jewish tradition, have placed the singing of the psalms a capela at the heart of worship so that the faithful would learn to pray them by heart. Tonight was no exception. A choir – called “Le Choeur de la Maîtrise Protestante” – sang a psalm before and after each sermon. I still can hear the notes of Psalm 8, rhymed by Clément Marot and probably harmonised by Claude Goudimel: Domine dominus noster quam admirabile est nomen tuum…   Now I come to what was for me tonight a sort of ecumenical epiphany. Although the service started rather late, at 20:30, there were three short sermons. The three addresses were given by three people who had been in prison during the war because of active resistance to oppression. The three witnessed to the consolation, communion and encouragement they experienced in prison thanks to the intercessions of Christians from other churches and countries. At the end of the last message, I suddenly realised that despite divisions among the churches there is a fundamental oneness in Christ that no war can destroy because it’s God’s gift; and because it’s God’s gift, it has to be made manifest in, and to, and for the world. That is the spirit of the ecumenical movement! The church universal was visible tonight! The first preacher was Rev. Dr Chester S. Miao. The editor of Christian Voices in China, he is preparing a report on “The Christian Church in ‘Occupied’ China.” Miao is the general secretary of the China Christian Council. He said that he was put in prison in Japanese occupied Shanghai during the war. He told of how, occasionally, he and his Japanese gaoler discovered that both were Christians and, when they discovered it, they would kneel in prayer together in his prison cell. Rev. Miao was followed by Bishop Eivind Berggrav, the leader of the Lutheran Church in Norway. During the war, Bishop  Berggrav was kept under house arrest in the forest because of his prominent role in the church resistance against German occupation. He gracefully preached in German. Towards the end of his preaching, Bishop Berggrav told the audience what he called “a detail of his captivity.” A peasant’s wife was determined to offer the bishop a bottle of milk. The soldiers placed at the entrance of the bishop’s chalet were probably taking a nap due to the summer heat. In any case, she managed to reach the kitchen window and whispered to the Bishop as she passed him the bottle: “Bishop, my husband was illegally listening to the T.S.F. yesterday and heard the Archbishop of Canterbury praying for you.” Berggrav concluded: ‘The woman immediately disappeared, but her messaged remained with me. It looks as though God had knocked down all the walls…’      The last address was by Rev. Martin Niemöller, one of leaders of the confessing church in Germany, which resisted the attempts of the Nazi regime to interfere in the life of the church in order to oblige it to comply with the anti-Semitic policies of the State. Niemöller was not only in prison but also in solitary confinement. The citizen of a country that invaded France, he gracefully preached in French. Niemöller told a crowded cathedral about the day his father visited him in prison. ‘I will never forget these words from my old father when for the last time he visited at the Gestapo office in the concentration camp of Oranienburg: My son, the esquimos from Canada and the Batak from Sumatra send you their greetings and are praying for you. Niemöller went on to say that during his years in prison that knowledge had kept him ‘not only sane but even joyful.’         For a young Protestant often used to the reality of the local congregation and the abstraction of the church universal, this was indeed an ecumenical epiphany. Christian divisions are sin and lead to violence. The search for the manifestation of the church universal is gospel obedience and leads to peace.  I hope the divided churches will not wait until the twenty-first century in order to put in practice the call to visible unity. I can hardly imagine the idea that one day they may gather again to remember what happened tonight. Would that mean that in the distant future divided Christians will have forgotten the disasters related to their past divisions like crusades, religious wars and indeed two world wars? Is not the movement for Christian unity an act of repentance for violence related to schisms and for dechristianisation inspired by Christian counter-witness? Is not the ecumenical movement an act of peace, of rebellion against the nationalism that uses confessional divisions among Christians to place ethnic Christianity above the mutual belonging and mutual accountability of the church universal?” The diary page suddenly vanished in the mist. Rev. Emmanuel Rolland, the senior pastor of the cathedral, brought me back to reality. It is time to get ready for the entrance procession. Rev. Blaise Menu, who moderates the Company of Pastors and Deacons, replaces Charles Cellerier and leads it, and I am asked to join him as Marc Boegner joined Cellerier in 1946. Boegner, whom Israel made a righteous among the nations in 1988, did not write an autobiography that would have included his ecumenical engagement from Edinburgh 1910 to Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. On the contrary. He wrote a book about the ecumenical imperative, L’Exigence oecuménique, which gave him the opportunity to talk about his life. Boegner never forgot February 1946: “More exciting still would be the ecumenical service celebrated in the evening of the following day at Saint-Pierre. The crowd was impressive to watch. Bishop Berggrav of Oslo preached in Germand and Niemöller in French. It was an ecumenical act of great value.” It was the ecumenical spirit at Calvin’s Cathedral. Exterior view of the cathedral, 17 June 2018. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC *Rev. Dr Odair Pedroso Mateus is interim deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches; director of the WCC Commission on Faith and Order; and lecturer at the WCC Ecumenical Institute at Bossey.  The author dedicates this text to Rev. Romi Benke, the general secretary of the National Council of Christian Churches of Brazil, CONIC, in gratitude for her courageous and inspiring ecumenical engagement.  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 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney Geneve 2 1211 Switzerland

WCC NEWS: Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca confirmed interim WCC general secretary

Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, interim WCC general secretary.
Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC

Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca has been confirmed interim World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary by the executive committee at an online meeting held on 3 June. Sauca will hold the post until the WCC central committee meets in June 2021.

The leadership of the WCC central committee decided to postpone the full WCC central committee meeting, once slated for 18-24 March 2020, along with the executive committee meeting that was to precede it in light of concerns about and implications of the current international spread of COVID-19.

WCC moderator Dr Agnes Abuom asked for support and prayers from the WCC global fellowship as the shift of leadership occurs. “Father Sauca is a senior colleague, well-qualified for this, and we will support and pray for him in these new responsibilities,” said Abuom.

Sauca, who is from the Orthodox Church in Romania, has been professor of Missiology and Ecumenical Theology at the WCC’s Ecumenical Institute in Bossey since 1998 and its director since 2001. He has served as a WCC deputy general secretary since 2014.

Sauca first joined the WCC in 1994 as executive secretary for Orthodox Studies and Relationship in Mission. Prior to joining the WCC he taught mission and ecumenism at the faculty of theology in Sibiu, Romania and later served his patriarchate as head of the newly established Department of Press and Communication with additional responsibility for the Department for External and Ecumenical Church Relations and of religious education in public schools. Sauca studied at the Theological Faculties in Sibiu and Bucharest, Romania, and obtained his Ph.D. in Theology (Missiology) at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is also an alumnus of the Graduate School at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey.

Rev. Dr Odair Pedroso Mateus appointed interim WCC deputy general secretary

Rev. Dr Odair Pedroso Mateus, lecturer of Ecumenical Theology at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey and director of the WCC Commission on Faith and Order, has been confirmed as the interim deputy general secretary for the WCC programme on Unity and Mission. Pedroso Mateus will hold the post until the WCC central committee meets in June 2021 and he will continue to serve also as director of Faith and Order.

He was appointed by the WCC executive committee at an online meeting on 3 June, on the recommendation of the interim general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca.

Pedroso Mateus is an ordained pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil. He holds a PhD in Protestant theology from the University of Strasbourg, France. His ecumenical studies occurred, among other places, at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey. He was successively: general secretary of the Association of Protestant Theological Seminaries in Brazil and editor of its journal Simpósio (1995-1999); professor at the Methodist University of São Paulo (1999); secretary for theology and ecumenical dialogue of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (2000-2007) and editor of its journal Reformed World (2004-2007); and president of the Foundation for Reformed Protestantism (2012-2016). He has been a lecturer at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey since 2006; a member of the Secretariat of the WCC Commission on Faith and Order since 2007; and director of Faith and Order since 2015.

Doug Chial appointed as interim director of the WCC Office of the General Secretariat

Doug Chial has been confirmed as the interim director of the WCC Office of the General Secretariat. He was appointed by the WCC executive committee at an online meeting held on 3 June, on the recommendation of the interim general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca. Chial will hold the post until the WCC central committee meets in June 2021.

Chial is a lay member of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary and the Bossey Ecumenical Institute. He has served the WCC since 2004, coordinating the Porto Alegre Assembly (2006) and the Busan Assembly (2013). Between assemblies he coordinated Church and Ecumenical Relations. Since 2014 he has managed Income Monitoring and Development. Chial also served the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), coordinating general councils in Debrecen (1997) and Accra (2004). He came to faith at Peoples Church in East Lansing, Michigan, an interdenominational congregation affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ and United Methodist Church. He is a board member of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians.

The World Council of Churches Staff Leadership Group will be led by Sauca and consists of the two deputy general secretaries and the interim director of the General Secretariat. Prof. Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri continues as deputy general secretary for Public Witness and Diakonia as before, as do the other previous members of the Staff Leadership Group, director of Finance Elaine Dykes, and director of Communication Marianne Ejdersten, in their present roles and mandates.

WCC executive committee issues “Statement on Racial Justice in the USA” (WCC press release of 3 June 2020)

WCC executive committee releases statement on role of churches during COVID-19 (WCC press release of 3 June 2020)

Rev. Prof. Dr. Ioan Sauca appointed acting WCC general secretary (WCC press release of 3 March 2020)

WCC Executive Committee to hold virtual meeting, pray for world burdened by COVID-19 (WCC press release of 30 May 2020)

WCC Executive Committee will meet online in June, Central Committee postponed until June 2021 (WCC press release of 14 May 2020)

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 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania.

Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press
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