Friday 7 September 2007

Videostar of the day - at the press conference

The youth blog elects a videostar of the day. Today Margot Kässmann was chosen because the way she chaired the morning's plenary session brought a really different atmosphere into the assembly - at last!
She and His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Albania were two of the stars of today's press conference as were three young people - Yee Hung from Hong Kong and the UK, Andrej Banus from Romania and Natalka Vasilevich from Belarus. Although the starting point for the press conference was justice questions and answers ranged over many other areas - women's participation, the future of ecumenism, the need for the churches to say respect for human rights is a gospel value, recognising how difficult the situation still is in many European countries still struggling to move towards more open societies.
Archbishop Anastasios came up with a lovely image of the rainbow colours of the light of justice, stressing also that we should not let talk of justice blind us to the need to face with humility the very real poverty many in Europe live in.
Anyway, Natalka had quite a few interview requests and turned up in the press room rather exhausted a few hours later. In the course of our conversations she said that she has 600 subscribers to her blog - but she's been doing it since 2002. Must ask her for the link tomorrow - always supposing you can read Russian or Belorussian.

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