Remembering Past Massacres – Honouring the Legacy and Resilience of Victims, December 6, 2021

REMEMBERING PAST MASSACRES: 

HONORING THE LEGACY AND RESILIENCE OF THE VICTIMS 

Focus: Europe 

Monday 6 December 2021, 2 – 3:30 PM CET (Zurich time) 

Registration link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-a7AJvGURAeQmQ5DiQx05Q 

Short bios 

MODERATOR 

REV. KARIN VAN DEN BROEKE is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches.

Boorn and raised in the Netherlands, she has been a minister in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands since 1992. She started her work as a pastor in a rural environment, worked for ten years as a university chaplain and then returned to the countryside as a minister.

In 2013, she was elected as chair of the general synod of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Her term ended in 2018. Currently Rev. Karin van den Broeke is Chief Program Officer of Kerk in Actie. She is also chair of the board of the Bible Society for the Netherlands and Flanders.

Rev. Karin van den Broeke has always connected local work with activities at national and international level. She has a special interest in the role of churches in the public domain. She has encouraged interfaith cooperation at many levels.

CO-FACILITATOR 

REV. DR MIKIE ROBERTS was appointed in February 2019 as the Programme Executive for Spiritual Life and Faith & Order at the World Council of Churches, Geneva, Switzerland. In this capacity, he coordinates the daily prayers at the Ecumenical Centre and also gives leadership to the musical and spiritual life initiatives for the WCC. Mikie was born on the island of Antigua and was ordained as a pastor within the Moravian Church, Eastern West Indies Province 28 years ago. Before joining the WCC, he served as the Provincial Director of Music for his church and has served congregations in Trinidad, Barbados and St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands) where he was last stationed.

PANELLISTS 

DR EUGENIA KOUKOURA is a writer and a historical show producer. She is also a a professional tourist guide from Thessaloniki, and speaks eight languages.

She has scripted and produced more than 350 films about byzantine art, mythology, history from ancient Greece until recent times. She has received awards for her documentary on “Baptism of Alexander the Great “.

212 of her films have been produced with Egnatia TV for her historical show “ΟΣΑ ΜΥΘΙΑ, ΤΟΣΗ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ” (how many are the myths, so much is the truth that relies in them.)

She has written 11 books on Alexander the Great. Her movie “Alexander the Great and women” was awarded by UNESCO in the festival for women of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

She has been a teacher of cultural history in many different organizations, schools and universities: NATO, Theological school of Ballamant, the Holy Cross (Boston, USA), etc.

She is the president of the Center of History in Thessaloniki.

DR GERALDINE SMYTH is a theologian and educator in Ecumenics, working in academic, civic and church settings. Graduate studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics were followed by a PhD on WCC’s Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation, (Trinity College Dublin, 1992). She was coordinator of the Opsahl Commission (1993-1994), developing dialogue processes and initiatives amid cycles of violence in Northern Ireland. She served in her Dominican Order in international leadership roles, and is an adjunct Associate Professor at Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin having been twice its Director. Her research interests include ecumenical reconciliation, conflict transformation, and women’s contributions to peace. She has collaborated with global research initiatives, e.g., linked to the UN’s research on the impact of trauma on children in conflict and the promotion of “peaceful childhoods”; and with scholars from Korea on the constructive role of memory in civic healing. She is a board member of Healing Through Remembering, NI, and involved in initiatives for educational opportunity for young children in disadvantaged Protestant areas; and in constructing a theology of hope, truth and forgiveness. She writes and broadcasts on themes of faith and politics and reconciliation (cf.,

The Documentary Podcast, Sisters of the Troubles – BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk › … › The Documentary Podcast,

FR CRISTIAN SONEA is Assoc. Professor of Orthodox Missiology at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology, “Babes-Bolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca (Romania), and an Orthodox priest, belonging to the Romanian Orthodox Church. He is the current director of the “Centre for Mission and Nomocanonical Studies” within the mentioned faculty.

Broadly, his research concerns Orthodox theology of mission, the mission of the Romanian Orthodox Church during the communist period, the mission of the Church towards human dignity, the Christian witness in the Post-modern society, and the common Christian witness.

As an ordained priest he is serving in “Saint Andrew” orthodox parish, Cluj-Napoca.

THE REV. DR KONRAD RAISER is a former WCC General Secretary (from 1993-2003).

Born 1938 in Magdeburg, he studied theology at universities of Tübingen, Heidelberg and Zürich from 1957 to 1963. He was ordained in the Protestant Church in Württemberg in 1964.

In 1965-66 he went to Harvard University in the US for additional studies in sociology and social psychology. Back in Germany, he worked from 1967-69 as a university assistant in practical theology at the Protestant theological faculty in Tübingen, earning a doctorate in theology in 1970 with a thesis on G.H. Mead’s theory of interaction and its significance for theological anthropology. In March 1967, he married Elisabeth von Weizsäcker. The Raisers have four sons.

In 1969, Raiser joined the staff of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva as study secretary in the Commission on Faith and Order. In 1973, he was appointed deputy general secretary. Raiser returned to Germany in 1983 to take up a post as professor of systematic theology and ecumenics at the Protestant theological faculty of the University of the Ruhr in Bochum, at the same time serving as director of the faculty’s Ecumenical Institute.

In 1992, the WCC Central Committee elected Raiser as general secretary for a five-year term. In September 1996, he was re-elected for a second term. He retired in 2004, and live sin Berlin, Germany.

Recent publications: Ecumenism in Transition, WCC/Geneva 1991; Religion, Power, Politics, WCC/Geneva 2013; The Challenge of Transformation, WCC/Geneva 2018.