St. Andrews Anglican church in Moscow has a new Priest. The Rev’d Clive Fairclough will be the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Representative to The Holy Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
The Rev’d Fairclough spent 20 years with NATO and he will now be the only Anglican Priest with a diplomatic passport. “I have always been a peacemaker” he says, now he will continue as a peacemaker, in a very different role. We welcome Rev’d Clive Fairclough to his new job and therefore to the Community of the Cross of Nails. We wish him all the best and pray for God’s blessing for his new role.
This August young people from all over the world will come together to learn about peace and reconciliation at the 2015 Global CCN- Youth Conference. The gathering will take place in Erfurt, Germany in the famous Augustinerkloster; the same Monastery where Martin Luther lived as a monk from 1505 to 1512 before he started the reformation.
Youth between the ages of 18-35 are warmly invited to attend this conference to learn more about the CCN mandate. Along with teaching and worship sessions there will be planned excursions. A visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp will help us understand more about the “wounds of history”. An outing to a local synagogue will unpack the meaning of how “to live with difference“. Together we will share our ideas, thoughts and experiences on how to “build a culture of peace”. Finally, as a global gathering there will be fun events to “celebrate diversity”.
Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of this international event and help spread the word by forwarding this on to your church youth worker.
For further information please email Hannah Prawitz: [email protected]
On the 7th of November, Canon Pastor Sarah Hills traveled to St. Petersberg in Germany to present a Cross of Nails to the Kirchliche Stiftung Petersberg (Halle). St. Petersberg received the Cross of Nails for being involved in international exchanges and ecumenical worship.
The programme began at 4:00 AM on the Friday afternoon with a lecture by Sr. Edith Ries and Jochen Heyroth about their journey to Coventry. Afterwards they went to the Afternoon Café. At the end of the day Sarah Hills presented the Coventry Cross of Nails to the Stiftung at evening prayer. “It was a lovely day”, Sarah Hills said in her review.
“Welcoming new members to the Community of the Cross of Nails is a real privilege. The Community of the Cross of Nails is flourishing across Europe and other parts of the world (I have also just returned from South Africa where I presented five cross of nails), and is the foundation for building strong relationships from Coventry across the world. The community is a network of organisations that are dedicated to building a lasting peace and working towards celebrating diversity in their communities – making a real difference to the everyday lives of people – now and for the future.”
A warm welcome to the Community of Cross of Nails!
After the presentation in St. Petersberg, Sarah Hills travelled to the parish of St Barbara in Munich to present another Cross of Nails. The parish is just 20km away from the location of the former concentration camp at Dauchau The church had requested that the base of their Cross of Nails is a stone from the concentration camp as a permanent reminder as to the devastating impact of conflict.The parish of St. Barbara organised a whole week of events connected with peace and reconciliation to welcome the Cross of Nails. One example of these events was a service presided over with a Polish church.The Festival week began with the presentation of the Cross of Nails in a service on the 9th of October. Reverend Canon Sarah Hills preached in this service about the Beatitudes and what it means to be blessed. Sarah Hills was really happy to see how much the parish of St. Barbara is working for peace and Reconciliation!
We all are very happy, to welcome the parish of St. Barbara in the worldwide Community of the Cross of Nails!
During Pentecost 2014 our CCN Partner the Frauenkirche in Dresden was very international, young and yellow. 420 young people from 26 different countries arrived in Dresden. Under this year’s theme “Freedom of Conscience – Take the Risk” they gathered for the annual Peace Academy.
The Peace Academy is a four-day-long event that gets together youth between the ages of 16 and 27 who are passionate about our world to discuss peace issues and share experiences but also to have fun, sing, dance and laugh.
Part of the programme is prepared and delivered by the participants themselves and includes workshops, discussions and music as well as time for contemplation and prayer.
This year’s peace academy was joined amongst others by our soon-to-be ICON School from Austria, who prepared an insightful board game about Austrian history and we were delighted to see last year’s interns be united again at the Academy.
