The World Council of Churches (WCC) is looking to its assembly at the end of August in Karlsruhe to raise up the issue of climate justice and underline the need to care for the creation, says the WCC’s acting general secretary, Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca.
“If we don’t change our behaviour, in 50 years our planet will be uninhabitable,” said Sauca on 12 August in Geneva, where the WCC has its offices.
“We must act now”, he said in an interview for the WCC journal.
More than 4,500 participants are expected at the WCC’s 11th Assembly, which opens in Karlsruhe on August 31st and runs until September 8 around the theme “Christ’s love moves the world to reconciliation and unity.”
At the assembly, Sauca said, “leaders will be asked to act now to care for our common planet, the Earth.”
The first thematic plenary of the gathering will take place on 1 September, which is marked by churches worldwide as the Day of Creation.
“The emphasis on creation will be very much highlighted in that first plenary,” said Sauca. “It is a theological issue. God’s plan in Christ was also the reconciliation and healing of the whole creation.”
He recalled how the WCC has long been at the forefront of efforts to place the issue of climate justice on the world’s agenda.
“The WCC deals with creation not as a fashionable issue of our time, but as a basic element of its very identity,” said Sauca.
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