World churches supremo to meet Pope
-13/06/05
The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia is to meet Pope Benedict XVI this week.
The encounter, which will take place on Thursday 16 June, will include a private audience.
It is the first meeting between the two since they took up their current positions.
A press conference is scheduled at 12:30 the same day, after the meeting.
The audience with the newly elected pope will be the climax of a 13-16 June visit to the Vatican which also includes meetings with the heads of four pontifical councils, a courtesy call to the Vatican state secretary, and visits to other Roman Catholic bodies and sites.
The WCC delegation will also be spending an afternoon as guests of the WCC member churches in Italy.
Kobia will be accompanied on the visit to Rome by WCC president Bishop Eberhardt Renz from the Evangelical Church in Germany, and central committee member Archbishop Makarios of Kenya and Irinoupolis from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa (Egypt).
The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC but works cooperatively with it in several areas, and is a full member of two of the Council’s commissions: Faith and Order, and World Mission and Evangelism.
Benedict XVI, then Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, was a member of the Faith and Order Commission between 1968 and 1975.
The main channel for WCC-Roman Catholic Church study and discussion is a consultative body created in 1965. The Joint Working Group will celebrate its 40th anniversary in November this year in Geneva.
Former WCC general secretaries have visited the Vatican in the past, and Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II visited the WCC in 1969 and 1984, respectively.