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Email to FriendRUSSIA/GEORGIA: World church grouping delegation travels to conflicted region
"We expect this visit to encourage Christians in both countries to keep talking to each other and praying for each other," said Elenora Giddings Ivory, the WCC's director of public witness and global advocacy in a September 3 statement. "If Christians in Georgia and Russia manage not to allow the divide between their countries to separate them, they may help their governments to move towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict."
The delegation expects to meet with high-level representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, Georgian Orthodox Church and others and it follows on a similar mission at the end of August by leaders of the Conference of European Churches, which like the WCC has mainly Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant churches as members.
During its four day trip, the WCC delegation will visit humanitarian work being undertaken by Action by Churches Together International and local partners of ACT International, which is a WCC-backed coordination body for emergency relief.
Members of the WCC delegation include Metropolitan Nifon of Targoviste, Romanian Orthodox Church; the Rev. Jean-Arnold de Clermont, Reformed Church of France, who is president of the Conference of European Churches; the Rev. László Lehel, director of Hungarian Interchurch Aid, on behalf of ACT International; Giddings Ivory; and Jonathan Frerichs, a WCC programm executive.
On August 12, the WCC and CEC had called for prayers and assistance for those affected by the conflict in the Caucasus, expressing alarm and distress at the use of force in the dispute over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The two organizations had given their support to statements by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church as well as the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia, all of which had called for a cease-fire, a negotiated solution to the conflict and urgent relief for those affected.
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