European Catholic, Orthodox prelates call for peace with creation (CCEE)

The presidents of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE) and Conference of European Churches (CEC) issued “Peace with Creation,” a joint statement for the Season of Creation.

“As Christian Churches, this is for us a time of prayer and sincere conversion, that gives voice to our profession of faith to the God that ‘created heaven and earth,’ as every Christian community has been proclaiming for centuries in the words formulated by the Council of Nicaea,” said Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius, Lithuania (president of the CCEE) and Archbishop Nikitas Loulias, CEC president and the Greek Orthodox archbishop of Great Britain.

“While proclaiming our faith in God the creator we also pray for our brothers and sisters that are victims of different forms of environmental and human injustice,” they added. “Our world can hardly be seen as a garden of peace nowadays.”

The CCEE is the continental assembly for Europe’s Catholic bishops; the CEC is a fellowship of over 100 Orthodox and Protestant communities. The Season of Creation, begun as an ecumenical initiative and later embraced by the Vatican, begins on September 1—the World Day of Prayer for Creation in the Orthodox churches (since 1989) and the Catholic Church (since 2015)—and concludes on October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.