(Vatican Radio) The Tenth General Assembly of the World Council of Churches began
on Wednesday in Busan, South Korea. The meeting is bringing together Christians from
many different denominations to speak about fulfilling the Lord’s mandate that “we
all be one.”
Although it is not a member, the Catholic Church has a large delegation
attending the meeting, led by the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch.
Among the delegation is Dr. Annemarie
Mayer, a professor of Theology at the University of Leuven in Belgium, and the representative
of the Catholic Church to the WCC.
“The WCC is not just the headquarters
in Geneva, but the main thing is its member churches and the assembly is the only
event when all these members come together,” she said. “Over 2 weeks [we] reflect
on the last 7 years… were we faithful to the mandate… what fruits can we harvest…
and where do we go from here….can we make things better… are there new goals with
new methods more adapted to spreading the Gospel in our contemporary world?”
She
told Vatican Radio about the goals of the General Assembly.
“Firstly, to try
to listen to the needs of member churches, not to be a super-church but an umbrella
body that would offer a forum for discussion and joint action to help implement the
call of proclaiming the Gospel on worldwide scale,” Mayer said. “Of course there
are different ways of implementing this….with at least 2 different approaches, firstly
the practical angle of what can we do together as churches that confess Trinitarian
faith and recognize each other as churches”
Listen to the full interview
by Philippa Hitchen with Dr. Mayer: