Porto Alegre - WCC general assembly

This parade took place at the WCC assembly in Porto Alegre. I am not sure exactly what it were about, but something about U-turns. Oh those photo memories.

I have now returned to Denmark and have started the process of digesting all the impressions from Porto Alegre and Brazil. Some 1000 photos are on my hard drive and I will keep letting those visible memories flow here on the blog.

The trip home was not without problems, but it started as a dream when I was upgraded to 1. Class (one step higher than business class) on the first part of the trip from Porto Alegre to Sao Paulo. Man is that a big seat! I was like a little child at Christmas trying every position that the seat could manage. Seat up - seat down. Footrest up - footrest down. Why not lie totally down? Oh yes! In the horizontal position the seat took up 3 and a half window. Nice lying there seeing the sunset through the fourth window.

In Sao Paulo all planes, more or less, were late due to the carnival in Rio. Ours was over 3 hours late, but the worst part was the lacking information at the airport (I will spare you the story of my encounter with the supervisor mr. Romero who according to his staff is a big fat man - and spare you the story of the missing food at gate 27). The day before I had bought 960 ml of beer from Uruguay which I had planned to share (I love this ecumenical word) with my Romanian colleague. Due to a bar visit we never got to the 960 ml that night, but at gate 27 the following day I had the time to drink the beer together with Habitus Helle. That was a nice beer at the right time (I still have the champagne - Cristian you know what I am talking about).

Until we were on the plane I thought we might be there until the morning, but at 01.50 our plane did leave. The plane was bound for Frankfurt everything was fine until Madrid where we had to stop to get extra full for the plane. Bad weather had forced us to take a longer route over the Atlantic. So of course we missed the connecting flight in Frankfurt, but eventually we arrived in Copenhagen some 5 hours late. But it could have been much worse I guess.

Here is a photo of Cristian from Romania leaving the hotel in Porto Alegre. I hope he enjoys the carnival.

The newly elected Central Committee of the World Council of Churches has elected Brazilian Walter Altmann as moderator and has chosen the members of its Executive Committee.

Walter Altmann, Gennadios of Sassima and Margaretha Hendriks-Ririmasse are, respectively, the new moderator and vice moderators of the WCC central committee.

The election of Altmann was not a surprise since he was one of the favorites for the post.

So I survived the massage which was in fact very nice. I am leaving the hotel in a few hours and will return to Denmark while my Romanian colleague explore the carnival in Rio. For some reason the image upload is currently not work for the Habitus site, but I will upload more pictures to th blog and the image gallery when in Denmark.

Here is a list of the new Executive Committee which was elected by the new Central Committee:

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The assembly finished yesterday with a nice closing prayer where a "black" America sermon (applause etc.) was one of the highlights.

A lot of decisions have of course been made at the assembly. Regarding youth the assembly has approved the creation of a youth body of the WCC.

In my eyes it is still to be seen if it will change anything. In Samuel Kobia description this body would consist of the youth which would be in the other committees of the WCC. Thus no more young persons would be involved. Also it is very uncertain if there is resources for this body to do any work. Maybe they will just meet 2 times in the next 7 years? Also if the WCC takes the youth serious as they claim in their press release they should allocate money for programs etc. for the youth work. In Europe e.g. the WCC does not have separate youth work. The good people at the Ecumenical Youth Council in Europe and the WSCF Europe are doing a good work for the youth, but these are independent bodies. So if the WCC prioritizes youth it must show it more visible. The creation of the youth body could just be a way of silencing the youth for a while. But I can be proven wrong and lets hope I do!

In 15 minutes I am going to have a massage here at my hotel. I wanted to write in the blog before that since I am not sure what remains of my motoric skills after the untrained Brazilian chief has been working on my spine.

The World Council of Churches has just (at 10.14 local time) adopted a minute on mutual respect, responsibility and dialogue with people of other faiths. Regarding the Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten's publication of the Mohammed Cartoons the minutes reads:

"As people of faith we understand the pain caused by the disregard of something considered precious to faith. . We deplore the publications of the cartoons. We also join with the voices of many Muslim leaders in deploring the violent reactions to the publications."

Read the minutes below.

=> Read more!