Churches urged to face today’s ‘multifaith reality’

‘Our world is in serious need of a moral compass,” WCC chief says

ATHENS (ENI) — A global gathering of church leaders representing divergent traditions, including Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Protestants, Orthodox and Roman Catholics, has ended with calls to respond to Christianity’s rapid growth in Africa and Asia and to engage in dialogue with other believers. 

The May 9‑16 World Council of Churches’ meeting that concluded on May 16 also heard calls for churches to deal with other challenges, including the world’s HIV/AIDS pandemic and what was described as a global system that concentrates economic power in fewer hands. 

“At a time of economic globalization, money has been elevated to the level of an idol,” the WCC general secretary, the Rev. Samuel Kobia, said during a Sunday evening service at the Areopagus in Athens, where in the first century St. Paul is said to have preached Christianity to skeptical Greek philosophers. (...)