Catholic Church participation in the concluding meetings of the Faith and Order Commission

The Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (Geneva) held its concluding meetings for the 2013‒2023 mandate, in a series of four online sessions, from 20-26 April 2023. The current commission was established following the WCC Assembly in Busan, South Korea, in 2013, and undertook four study projects during its mandate: the pilgrimage of justice and peace, ecclesiology, moral discernment, and the ecumenical celebration of the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, scheduled for 2025. Five Catholic theologians were assigned to this Commission, participated in each of these projects and contributed to the preparation of the resulting documents.

The Catholic representatives who participated as full members in the Commission during this past mandate were Reverend William Henn (Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome), Professors Myriam Wijlens (University of Erfurt, Germany), Krzysztof Mielcarek (Catholic University of Lublin, Poland), and David Kirchhoffer (Australian Catholic University, Brisbane), together with Reverend Andrzej Choromanski (Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity), who acted as a consultant.

The last meeting of the Commission was held in Bossey, Switzerland in November 2022. A new commission will be appointed during the WCC central committee meeting in June 2023. According to the existing agreement, the Catholic Church constitutes 10% of the members of the commission.