Do not settle for an email blasting service or a newswire overloaded with financial statements. Standard Newswire gets your news into the hands of working journalists, broadcast hosts, and news producers.
Find out how you can start using Standard Newswire to
Sign Up to Receive Press Releases:
Standard Newswire™ LLC
209 W. 29th Street, Suite 6202
New York, NY 10001, USA.
(212) 290-1585
Contact: World Council of Churches, +41-22-791-6153 +41-79-507-6363, media@wcc-coe.org
MEDIA ADVISORY, June 18 /Standard Newswire/ -- In an open letter to world government leaders and churches around the globe, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, has called for Haiti not to be forgotten and for the earthquake reconstruction process to be accountable to the people of Haiti, not only to international donors. That accountability must include those who need the reconstruction most desperately. The churches should reflect unity and be involved in the reconstruction in the broader sense.
Flush from a 3-day visit to Haiti, 14-16 June, Tveit said he leaves Haiti with "great respect for the resilience and the faith of the Haitian people and churches."
From 14-16 June Tveit led a 7-person ecumenical delegation of church leaders from around the world to express solidarity and offer pastoral support to Haitian churches as they participate in the rebuilding of their country.
The delegation included representatives of the WCC, churches, church councils and conferences in Latin America and the Caribbean, France and the international ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together).
They met with Haitian politicians, church officials and congregational members during their visit. The delegation visited several churches that were damaged by the 12 January earthquake, including the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port au Prince, the Russian Orthodox School of the Haitian Orthodox Mission and the Church of God.
In the letter Tveit calls on churches around the world to continue to be one in their "solidarity and prayer" for Haiti. "For churches, it is essential to reflect, in times like these, what it means to be one in Christ, locally, regionally and globally," he wrote.
Relief and development work by churches in Haiti
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 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.
