In this season of hope and goodwill, please consider making a special financial gift on this Giving Tuesday to enable our shared ministry for Christian unity in Rome.

Dr. Roland Fernandes, general secretary of United Methodist Global Ministries, recently wrote, “this Giving Tuesday, we’re reminded of God’s call to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry and heal the sick. Communities throughout the world are facing worsening crises – deep cuts to aid, weakened support systems, education access under threat and forced deportations. The call to respond with compassion has never been more clear. When aid is cut, hope can still shine through the faithful generosity of people like you. Every act of giving carries a powerful promise: we will not turn away from our neighbor in need.”

Missionaries are agents of hope and help the Church witness to Christ’s love and salvation already at work in the world.

Support this missionary and partner with me to bring hope through dialogue, understanding, and unity. My missionary number is #3021378.

Remembering the Martyrs

The theme of Christian martyrs has been a recurring theme in my ministry since my last missionary letter in September.

Representatives of Christian churches gathered in Rome on 14 September to commemorate Christian martyrs of the 21st century. While some Christians live far from persecution and the threat of martyrdom, Christians – Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox – in some parts of the world are under constant fear of violence. Among the Christian martyrs of our time, we recall the 21 Coptic Orthodox Christian martyrs who were kidnapped by ISIS and beheaded because of their faith on a beach in Libya in February 2015, the murder of 8 worshippers at Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in Quetta, Pakistan in a terrorist bombing on 17 December 2017, and the 2003 execution of 8 members of the Anglican Church’s Melanesian Brotherhood in the Solomon Islands who were attempting to broker peace during a period of civil unrest. The ecumenical prayer service was held in the Church of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, the church built over the tomb of the Apostle Paul, himself a martyr of the Christian faith. I accompanied my colleague Rev. Dr. Reynaldo Ferreira Leão Neto, general secretary of the World Methodist Council, as he led prayers during the service. Pope Leo XIV in his short homily said, “we celebrate the hope of these courageous witnesses of the faith. It is a hope filled with immortality because their martyrdom continues to spread the Gospel in a world marked by hatred, violence and war; it is a hope filled with immortality because, even though they have been killed in body, no one can silence their voice or erase the love they have shown; it is a hope filled with immortality because their witness lives on as a prophecy of the victory of good over evil.”

In October, I traveled to El Salvador to participate in the annual meeting of the Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission, of which I am a member and its co-secretary. The joint commission, appointed by the World Methodist Council and the Catholic Church, has been working for dialogue and understanding between Catholics and Methodists since 1967, with the goal of full communion in faith, sacramental life, and mission between Methodist churches and the Catholic Church. We met in the capital San Salvador, a city filled with wonderful and welcoming people and marked by a violent past – the Salvadoran Civil War, which was followed by gang violence. Our commission visited the chapel of the Divine Providence Hospital, where former Catholic archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated following his sermon during a Catholic Mass on 24 March 1980. As we prayed together, I was moved by the realization that this simple place, once defiled by an ugly and evil act, could have been frozen in time as a museum. Yet, it is sanctified again and again by the breaking of bread and sharing of the cup as a simple chapel offering the hope and love of Christ to those who are suffering. The Suffering Christ who is Immanuel, God with us, was there that day, calling us to where Christ already is – with the poor, the sick, and the suffering – and reminding us that God is not far off but at hand. Read more about the work of the commission.

I attended the Sant’Egidio’s annual International Meeting of Peace at the end of October in Rome. The gathering brings together senior religious leaders from around the world and from all major religions for discussion, encounter, and shared learning. I was present with several other Methodists including Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett, president of the World Methodist Council, Rev. Alesssandra Trotta, moderator of the Methodist-Waldensian Church of Italy, and Lord Griffiths of Burry Port FLSW, a minister of the Methodist Church of Great Britain and member of the House of Lords (UK). In a panel discussion on Christian unity, Archbishop Sahak Mashalian of the Armenian Apostolic Church spoke about the experience of his church in the Armenian genocide in the 20th century and disunity among Christians. He spoke powerfully that those who oppress and kill Christians normally do not ask if we have achieved unity with other Christians nor do they seek to understand if we are Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox. They simply ask if we are Christian. Our differences that lead to disunity as Christians means nothing for persecution. At the conclusion of the conference, the Christian participants prayed together inside the Colosseum in Rome, a site according to church tradition associated with Christian persecution. Among the other church leaders present for the prayer service were Pope Leo XIV of the Catholic Church, Patriarch Mar Awa III from the Assyrian Church of the East, and Bishop Henrik Stubkjær of the Lutheran World Federation. Read about the meeting.

A Brief Visit to Yale University

From 7-8 November, I visited Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, to teach a leadership seminar and hold a public conversation on my ministry in Rome. Sponsored by the Yale Divinity School Transformational Leadership program, my intensive leadership seminar was a graduate-level weekend seminar on the subject of the international ecumenical movement, Methodist-Catholic relations, and methods for international dialogue. The public conversation with Prof. Mark Heim, the Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School, was entitled, “A Methodist at the Vatican: The Work of Ecumenical Ministry at the Holy See.” I attended Yale Divinity School from 2008-2011 and received a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University in 2011.

Another Encounter

Part of my ministry is to foster encounter between senior church leaders. Bishop Knut Refsdal (second left), bishop of the Nordic-Baltic-Ukraine Area of The United Methodist Church, and Rev. Myron Howie (center), treasurer of the World Methodist Council, met Pope Leo XIV following the General Audience on Wednesday, 26 November 2025. They were accompanied by Rev. Howie’s spouse Rev. Jules Dunham Howie (second right) and child Ms. Grace Howie (third left), and Fr. Martin Browne OSB (right) of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity. Rev. Myron Howie and Rev. Jules Dunham Howie are ordained ministers of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Photo © Vatican Media