‘Celebrating our Reconciling Vision of Hope’ service in St Anne’s

Friday January 13th 2023

The Irish Council of Churches and Irish Inter-Church Meeting will be holding a joint service of worship in St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, on Sunday January 22.

The purpose of Celebrating our Reconciling Vision of Hope is to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the Irish Council of Churches – one of the world’s oldest national representative church bodies – whose first meeting took place on January 23 1923.

The service will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Ballymascanlon Talks which led to the establishment of the Irish Inter-Church Meeting, through which the ICC engages with the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

The service will be led by the Dean of Belfast, the Very Rev Stephen Forde, and the preachers will be the Most Rev Eamon Martin, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, and the Rev Dr Harold Good, former President of the Methodist Church in Ireland and recipient of the World Methodist Peace Award in 2007.

The ICC states: “At the service, we will give thanks for the courage of our predecessors, for whom these were brave initiatives, recommit ourselves to the ongoing work of reconciling, which is part of the unfinished work of peace on our island, and bear witness to the hope that comes from the promises of a new creation in which there will be no more division, violence or pain.”

The service begins at 3.30pm in Belfast Cathedral and all are welcome.