Vancouver (ENI). 23 April 2002 - Canada's most prominent Jewish organisation has withdrawn its participation of 30 years in an interfaith consultation following the appearance of a website message
critical of Israeli policy written by a church dialogue partner. The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) announced on 10 April that it was pulling out of the inter-religious Canadian Christian Jewish
Consultation (CCJC). A message on the Anglican Church of Canada's website was "the straw that broke the camel's back", said Manuel Prutschi, the CJC's national director of community relations, who
accused the Anglican church and the United Church of Canada of being "one-sided". [Ecumenical News, Geneva Switzerland]

Ecumenical News International 29 April 2002 - Amsterdam (ENI). Aiming to inject a sense of urgency into a long-running church unification process, officials of three Dutch denominations have set a target date for their merger into one church. The officials named 2004 as the provisional deadline for completing the merger of the three denominations: the Netherlands Reformed Church (NHK), the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (GKN) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The three denominations are currently linked together in a federation called the Uniting Protestant Churches in the Netherlands (UPCN), but the merger will create a single, 2.7-million-member Protestant church. [Ecumenical News International

Ecumenical News International -New York (ENI) 24 May 2002. US Christian leaders have taken a key step towards enlarging ecumenical dialogue in the United States in a move that might lead to the creation of a new national body that could eventually replace the US National Council of Churches (NCC). The new body would include Anglican, Evangelical, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic and mainline and
predominately black Protestant churches. [ENI-Ecumenical 24 May 2002]

Moscow (ENI) 25 April 2002. In one of the latest events in a series described by the Roman Catholic Church in Russia as an "organised campaign" against it, a Catholic bishop was turned back at Moscow's international airport as he was trying to return from Poland to his diocese in eastern Siberia. On 19 April, border guards cancelled without explanation Catholic Bishop Jerzy Mazur's visa for Russia. Two days after Mazur was barred from entering Russia, his cathedral in Irkutsk was picketed during Sunday mass by about 100 Orthodox protesters denouncing Catholic "expansion" in Russia.

Rome and New York (ENI). US cardinals summoned to the Vatican by Pope John Paul II because of a growing sexual abuse scandal have returned to the United States amid claims that they have failed to deal decisively with the issue. Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, told reporters in Rome that there was a "growing consensus" in the church that a priest who had committed child sexual abuse should not be reassigned to another parish. However, the unprecedented summit from 23 to 24 April, called in an attempt to stem the crisis in the US Catholic church, saved a final decision on policy as well as procedures for dealing with paedophile clergy for a June meeting of US bishops in Dallas. [Ecumenical News International 25 April 2002]

Church News Notes, April 19, 2002 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service] In a radio address on March 11, Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America, told of an experience of brotherhood with a Muslim (Anglican Communion News Service, ACNS 2911, March 20, 2002). Griswold said he was in Florida last October and was walking along a beach holding a Russian Orthodox prayer rope. A Muslim approached him and asked what he was doing. Griswold replied that he was praying "that I may be made one with Christ." The Muslim said his father used a string of beads similar to the Orthodox prayer cord to pray, "Allah, Allah, Allah." Griswold asked the Muslim what happened when his father prayed this prayer, and the Muslim replied, "His heart was purified and he was made one with God." Did the Episcopal bishop then take this fine opportunity to preach the blessed and only gospel of salvation to this pagan man? No, nothing like that. He continues: "A deep joy welled up within me as I recognized the profound unity of our prayer regardless of our different paths. My fear had been transformed in friendship and a sense of brotherhood."