by Luigi Sandri

[ENI • Rome] The Vatican has officially confirmed the appointment of Swiss Bishop Kurt Koch to replace Cardinal Walter Kasper as head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, after widespread speculation that such a move was to take place.

A Vatican announcement on 1 July said that Pope Benedict XVI had accepted the resignation of 77-year-old-Kasper and had named in his place Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel, aged 60.

by Byron Rempel-Burkholder, Mennonite World Conference news service

Strasbourg, France (MWC) -When Lutherans from around the world gather in July, they will seek a historic reconciliation with Mennonites and other Christians of the Anabaptist tradition. On July 22, the third day of the eleventh assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) to be held in Stuttgart, Germany, delegates are expected to ask "forgiveness-from God and from our Mennonite sisters and brothers-for the harm that our forebears in the sixteenth century committed" in persecuting Anabaptists.

The resolution acknowledges that in the centuries since then, Lutheran scholars and authors have often portrayed Anabaptists in misleading and hurtful ways. It also spells out commitments to continue working with contemporary Anabaptists in fostering greater understanding and fellowship.

The action, representing 70 million Lutherans worldwide, comes after several years of conversation between representatives of the LWF and of Mennonite World Conference. In July last year, LWF general secretary Ishmael Noko of Zimbabwe-son of a Brethren in Christ mother-attended the MWC assembly in Asuncion, Paraguay. In an emotional moment for many delegates, he announced the resolution that would be presented at Stuttgart.

"This wound," Noko told the delegates, "needs the deep healing possible only when it can be seen, in the bright sunlight of memory, for the ugly wound that it is. Then we can seek for it the healing of God's forgiveness and reconciliation."

[Stuttgart, Germany • ELCIC news] Bishop Munib A. Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) has been elected President of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) by the Eleventh Assembly here, a gathering of 418 delegates and others from the LWF member churches.

Three hundred and sixty registered delegates voted, representing 140 member churches from 79 countries. Rt Rev. Dr Younan received 300 votes affirming his election, 23 against; there were 37 abstentions. There were no other nominees.

Younan, 59, succeeds Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who has been President of the LWF since the organization's last Assembly in Winnipeg, Canada, in 2003.