International Diaconate Center Assembly brings together participants from around the world.
The focus of the content for the next four years, ecumenism and a planned network between the wives of deacons of the Catholic Church were the main topics of the board and delegates’ meeting of the International Diaconate Center (IDC) at its headquarters in Rottenburg from 22.-26. May 2022.
The meeting in hybrid format was primarily about the question of how the IDC can be more present in different regions of the world and how the membership can become more international, and what role the delegates can play in this. The time of the conference was chosen to enable interested members to participate in the German Catholic Day. The “Evening of Encounter” and the big opening service on Ascension Day in Stuttgart formed the end of the IDC meeting, so to speak. The participants had travelled from South Africa, Australia and Finland, among others.
The IDC plans to set up a network for the wives of deacons in the coming years. Finally, the decision to enter the diaconate of married men is not an individual decision. The family and especially the wife are involved in this decision because they are affected by the future path of the deacon and this also opens up new opportunities for developing one’s own family spirituality.
The ecumenical efforts of the IDC should also be strengthened. In addition to the long-standing delegate Terttu Pohjolainen from Finland – herself a deaconess and president of the Kaiserswerther General Conference, an association of over 100 deaconesses’ houses, evangelical diaconal communities and organizations – the IDC succeeded in having Archbishop Dr. Mor Polycarpus Augin Aydin from the Syrian Orthodox Church in the Netherlands to recruit a high-ranking representative of the Orthodox Churches as an adviser to the Assembly of Delegates.
