February 17, 2005

GENEVA – Federico Pagura, Bishop emeritus of the Evangelical Methodist Argentine Church called on Christian youth to attend the IX Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) to be held in Porto Alegre, February 14 - 23, 2006.

"We want the assembly to have a young face," said Pagura, WCC co-president and former president of the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI). He added that we want the voice of young people, their struggles, hopes and frustrations and their desire to renew the life and thinking of Churches to be heard.

Together with official youth delegates from Churches, Pagura hopes that hundreds of young people attend as stewards, visitors and observers. There is a year before the Assembly and young people can organize activities to cover the cost of their trip, he said.

The ecumenical leader emphasized that it is the first time in 57 years of institutional life that the WCC will hold an assembly on Latin American soil. Latin American Churches, in proposing Porto Alegre as the site of the Assembly, wanted to offer the ecumenical movement the opportunity to be present in a "laboratory" moved by hope and the desire that "another world is possible," he said.

Porto Alegre is a symbol that "Another World is Possible" in the face of the failure of a system that only produces hunger, unemployment, social and environmental deterioration and exclusion and wars. The world is waiting for the contributions made by the Churches, the ecumenical movement and other religious expressions, currently restless and active around the world, he said.

The Brazilian scenario, said Pagura, offers a setting that invites us to more serious, profound and realistic thinking for an Assembly of Churches. Brazil is a spectrum of contemporary social and cultural reality, appropriate so that the Biblical-theological reflection is not distant from the concrete reality facing humanity.

There, he said, is the struggle against the foreign debt and for a new economy, coexistence with different religious sectors and different cultures and races. In the Pontifical Catholic University, site of the Assembly, we will also have the opportunity to hear the voices of the most lucid theologians and thinkers from the continent and around the world.

The major attention focused on the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre last month encouraged many Churches, people and organizations, in particular in the Americas, to travel to Porto Alegre as delegates, visitors or observers.

"I am sure that Porto Alegre will allow the WCC to project its thought, programs and hopes toward the continent and the entire world," said Pagura.

Latin American and Caribbean Communication Agency