German churches' experience with the issue of "domestic violence" will play an important role in a Peace Declaration of the World Council of Churches planned for 2011, said Georges Lemopoulos, deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC).
"The churches have denied the existence of this issue for a long time," he said in Frankfurt on Saturday.
Frankfurt was the first stop for a WCC team of six people led by Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi from Burundi. The visit of the WCC team in Germany is one of several team visits planned throughout the world between now and 2010 to prepare for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in 2011.
The convocation is the culmination of the WCC's Decade to Overcome Violence 2001-2010, in which the German churches have been particularly active and committed from the outset. In Frankfurt, projects and experiences from south-western Germany were presented to the international team.
Rev Helene Eichrodt-Kessel, from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg's office for the Decade to Overcome Violence, told the WCC team that the Protestant churches are pushing to have the issue of domestic violence included as part of the school syllabus in Baden-Württemberg and also to increase access to advice for victims.
Domestic violence is an issue taken up both in theological training and in-service training.
"In our jobs, we go into people's homes and have the opportunity to speak with them," she said.
