GENEVA, Switzerland — Christians around the world will mark Jan. 18–25 as the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, even as one leading ecumenist decried weakening ties between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
The annual week of prayer is coordinated by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The 2004 theme — “My peace I give to you” — was suggested by an ecumenical group in Aleppo in northern Syria. Local churches are asked to host prayer services and dialogues during the week.
“It is one place where they lament and mourn their divisions — but where they do it together, where they pray and search for ways to overcome their disunity, to accept and to love each other,” said Kersten Storch, a German Lutheran minister, and Thomas Best, an American minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), who are helping plan the week for the WCC.
The annual week comes as the retiring leader of the WCC, Konrad Raiser, bemoaned “unmistakable signs” that progress between Protestants and Catholics has slowed during the past decade.
The Roman Catholic Church does not belong to the WCC, which is comprised of 342 Protestant and Orthodox churches, but does participate in some WCC initiatives, notably the WCC’s Faith and Order Commission.
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