Ethics · Society · Theology · Mission · Sociology of Religions
At the end of his speech on principles of peace-making at a Vatican conference on “Ethics in Action,” Prof. Thomas K. Johnson, WEA Ambassador to the Vatican, asked the photographers to come to the front. He then publicly shook hands with the Iranian Shiite Ayatollah Mostafa Mohaghegh Damad, a prominent international spokesman for his variety of Islam.
The President of the International Council of the International Society for Human Rights, Thomas Schirrmacher, gave a plenary lecture to the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg in Heilbronn on the topic “Human Rights in the One World.” Schirrmacher had been proposed and invited by representatives of the 'Open Church' discussion group (comparable to parliamentary groups or factions).
A delegation of the ZOCD Board and Advisory Board, headed by the Advisory Board Chairman Thomas Schirrmacher, participated in the opening ceremony of the new Syriac Orthodox Church in Giessen. The Advisory Board Chairman participated as a bishop in the ceremony and conveyed the ZOCD’s welcoming words to the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch S.H. Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II and to the Hessian Prime Minister Volker Bouffier.
After the last general audience with Pope Francis prior to the summer break, the Pakistani human rights lawyer Aneeqa Anthony has presented a painted brick as a symbol for the numerous Christians enslaved in brick factories in Pakistan. The President of the International Council of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), Thomas Schirrmacher, and the leader of the ISHR's Department for Religious Freedom, Michaela Koller, arranged the meeting and accompanied the lawyer.
“The secular state must equally guarantee freedom of religion for freedom loving Muslims and use its monopoly on the use of force to suppress those Islamists who are enemies of freedom of religion.”