The General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Dr. Samuel Kobia, called on the world’s Christian community to renew its commitment to working for a different world at yesterday’s International Day of Prayer for Peace, reports Ekklesia.
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Rev. Kobia said at a special ceremony at the International Centre in Geneva that the complex challenges facing us today should not discourage Christians from working for peace and justice.

“Together, as people of faith, we have faith in a better world,” he said.

The Rt. Rev. Francis Loyo, an Anglican bishop from Sudan, also made an appeal for prayers from world churches as the country makes a fresh attempt at peace under new formation of a power-sharing government after 10 years of civil war.

“Pray that we get in with the government, talk with the government, so they don’t take things for granted,” said Rev. Loyo.

On the eve of the International Day of Prayer for Peace, Kobia called the event “a manifestation of the essential commitment of churches to hope, healing and reconciliation in a world which is profoundly divided and fearful of its own future.”

Some 560 million Christians were represented in yesterday’s WCC initiative, which first took off in 2004. The prayer day went under the motto of “Building communities of peace for all”, with Asia as the region of special focus, and forms part of the WCC’s Decade to Overcome Violence: Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace (2001 – 2010).

The International Day of Prayer for Peace was initiated by the WCC deliberately to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Peace.