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Rev. Dr Kenneth Mtata, World Council of Churches (WCC) programme director for Life, Justice, and Peace, will participate in a conference, “A holistic approach to health in the Caritas Confederation.” 

Right Rev. Dr Garth Minott is president of the Jamaica Council of Churches. He took time to reflect on how truth, accountability, and compassion can protect people from gender-based violence. 

[Episcopal News Service] On Jan. 25, 1873, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, workers laid the cornerstone of St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church, the first non-Roman Catholic church built inside Rome’s ancient walls. The land was purchased, and construction began in 1872, two years after Italian forces captured Rome and the unification of Italy was complete, which brought a constitution protecting religious freedom and the end of papal rule in the city. In March 1876, the red brick and travertine Gothic Revival church was consecrated. St. Paul’s will celebrate the consecration’s 150th anniversary year with a special Evening Prayer on June 26. California Bishop Austin K. Rios, who served 12 years as St. Paul’s priest-in-charge, will preach, and Bishop Mark Edington of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe will preside. Although the church’s founders leaned into Protestantism and displayed a somewhat antagonist need to express their own brand of catholicism in the eternal city, over time St. Paul’s was called both to represent The Episcopal Church in Rome and to communicate its understanding of catholicism as not just the Vatican or the Roman Catholic Church, but the larger calling as presented in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, emphasizing parallel liturgies, shared roots and Catholic-Anglican ecumenism, Rios told Episcopal News Service. “Being in Rome felt to me like we were touching on those roots all the time, and they were alive; it wasn’t just a dead past, it was something that was giving life to the present and to the future,” he said. As in John 15:5, “I am the vine, you are the branches.” What began as an American outpost for U.S. Embassy personnel, merchants, industrialists and tourists 100 years later welcomed Africans in the diaspora, and in the 1980s, founded the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center and established a Latino ministry. Later, it welcomed the LGBTQ+ community, establishing the first inclusive space for queer Christians and their allies in Rome. Michelle Ruelle found St. Paul’s in 2023 while searching for an inclusive Christian community. Born in the United States and raised Roman Catholic, in her youth she left the church and later self-identified as “unchurched.” She has lived the last 25 years in Rome, where she returned to Catholic Mass while her son took catechism classes, a rite of passage for Italian teens in what is largely a secular society. The classes required a parent to sign a document committing them to take the student to church on Sunday. She fulfilled her obligation but continued to attend because she liked the Gospel stories and the revolutionary character, Jesus. Yet, at the same time, she had many LGBTQ+ friends, her then 12-year-old daughter came out as gay, and eventually she couldn’t reconcile some of the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings. “You’re never going to get away, especially here in Rome, from the messages coming from the pulpit about gender theory. … Or if you are divorced, don’t come up for Communion,” said Ruelle, who is divorced. “I was always making excuses, concessions … then finally I was just like, I can’t anymore, now that my daughter has come out. I can’t feel safe in a place where I don’t know if somebody from the pulpit is going to say gay people are an abomination.” So, she left, feeling sad because she’d discovered the beauty of Christianity but had no place to worship. A year later, she typed the words “inclusive Christian denomination” into Google, and it delivered “The Episcopal Church.” “And on that particular day on the homepage, they had the LGBTQ flag, and I remember thinking, wait a second, I was looking for a Christian community, these people are Christian, and they’re proclaiming they’re supporting LGBTQ rights. What is this about? I got so excited, but then I was like, oh, but of course they’re not going to be here in Rome.” She’d landed on The Episcopal Church’s denominational website and then discovered its branch in Rome: St. Paul’s Within the Walls. “Day one, it was like home; it was so great. I have been there ever since,” said Ruelle, who became a vestry member and is in the process of becoming a deacon. St. Paul’s reputation for affirming and welcoming the LGBTQ+ community is one thing that draws people who, for historical, social, and political reasons, aren’t able to feel at home in their local church in Rome. “That’s one of the pillars of our ministry as The Episcopal Church in Rome. … We were the first and still only official church body to participate in Pride,” said Conner Drennen, one of St. Paul’s co-wardens. “There are other grassroots organizations and religious ecumenical groups — we all march all together — but we remain the only officially sanctioned church body.” For Harrison Wade, an Arkansan raised in the Southern Baptist tradition, St. Paul’s offered a welcoming space where he could express his true identity. Wade moved to Rome for graduate school and stayed to work in environmental sustainability. He began attending a Reformed Baptist church, but as a gay man, he felt he couldn’t be himself. When he and his Italian partner, a Roman Catholic, attended services together, Wade would introduce him as a friend. “But whenever we came to St. Paul’s, we could sit next to each other, we could be a couple. It wasn’t like it was a political statement or anything … I felt immediately accepted, and the more I attended, the more I felt at home.” Still, Wade said, to go from being a Southern Baptist to becoming an Episcopalian wasn’t an easy decision. “I remember praying for a sign, and there was one sermon that was just super evident that God was talking to me and saying, like, ‘Harrison, you have a home here at this church,’ and I made some of my closest friends at St. Paul’s.” St. Paul’s is not the only church in the Anglican […]

An 11-person ecumenical group from Zurich visited the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 18 June, receiving an introduction to the WCC after touring Geneva.

Youth from across the United Church of Christ gathered in Washington, D.C. the week of June 14 for an inaugural program aimed to equip them with the skills and confidence to faithfully advocate on issues they care about most. The…

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In April, 100 emergency clean-up buckets arrived at Ewa Community Church UCC in Oahu in an effort to aid flood recovery efforts there. This followed Hawaii’s historic flooding in March, and in its wake, Ewa Community Church has served as…

The post The life cycle of CWS clean-up buckets: Congregations support flood response from Hawaii to Ohio appeared first on United Church of Christ.

The United Church of Christ, along with more than a dozen other denominations and their representatives, joined together in writing a letter to express concern about the recent revisions to the Religious Affiliations Code List, administered under the authority of…

The post UCC joins denominations, religious leaders in joint letter raising concern over revisions to the Religious Affiliation Codes list appeared first on United Church of Christ.

Launched just two months ago, the United States of Kindness has taken off and is picking up steam in 2026. The response to this initiative has been extremely positive within the United Church of Christ, with 106 distinct UCC sign-ups,…

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G7 leaders met in Évian on 15–17 June, on the French shore of Lake Geneva, a few kilometres from the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Ecumenical Centre. On two continents, churches were pressing the case those leaders left unfinished: how the world taxes wealth is a question of faith. From Malawian church councils demanding an end to harmful tax incentives to UK Christians challenging Amazon’s tax record, a movement the WCC has backed since its 2019 Zacchaeus Tax Campaign is turning conviction into organised pressure.

The Illinois State House recently passed a historical Civility Resolution championed by Pastor Anthony Williams, something he has been working toward for a long time. The bill declares August 2026 as Civility Month in the State of Illinois, and commends…

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