SW News: Joining Church leaders and heads of state, the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Rev. Ioan Sauca paid homage to Benedict XVI declaring in a statement that he showed courage in his leadership, writings and pronouncements.

An association of 352 Churches from over 120 nations, WCC has 580 million members and provides a forum for ecumenical dialogue and cooperation. Although the Catholic Church is not a member, since the end of the Second Vatican Council, it has been cooperating with it by means of a mixed working group, which once had Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Rev. Sauca said, "On behalf of the World Council of Churches, I express my deepest condolences on the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He was the first pope to come from a country, Germany, with a rough balance between Protestants and Catholics, a country that has been in the center of the Reformation of the 16th century."

He reminisced how the late pope emeritus was the first to belong to a committee of the WCC—the Commission on Faith and Order. Rev Sauca also recalled how the commission drafted the Ravenna Declaration, which was a small but significant step in tiding over a 10,000-year-old dispute regarding the role of the papacy. The General Secretary said Benedict XVI never showed laxity in ecumenical endeavors.

In a similar manner, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) issued a statement on the ecumenical and theological initiatives undertaken by the late pope emeritus. The federation embraces 150 communities of Lutherans and has 77 million members. LWF Secretary General Pastor Anne Burghardt of Estonia said the former Roman pontiff was a “keen-minded theologian with a strong academic background that shaped his pontificate”. She also said that he would be remembered for his appreciation of the Joint Declaration of the Doctrine of Justification, which was a watershed event in the ecumenical ties between both Churches. Burghardt also remembered the commitment shown by the pope emeritus to foster greater reconciliation between various Churches.