Webinar asks what churches owe older people in an ageing world

Webinar asks what churches owe older people in an ageing world

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Thu, 09/17/2026 - 14:29

Governments signed the United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030), a ten-year promise to act on growing old. On 16 September, the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission of the Churches on Health and Healing asked where churches belong inside it, opening an online webinar that Dr Gisela Schneider said set European and African experience beside that of India and Hong Kong.

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Photo: Paul Jeffrey/Life on Earth Pictures

Rev. Dr Fr Stavros Kofinas, moderator of the commission, said the churches ’ first task is to make the change visible. “ Our mission as churches is to bring these developments to the forefront so that people can become aware of them,” he said. Old age, he argued, is shaped by five pressures: digital technology, anxiety, anger, apathy, and an adolescence that stretches into adult life.

Prof. Arvind Kasturi, professor of community health at St John ’ s Medical College, Bengaluru, set out five obstacles that stand between an older person and the care they need: access, awareness, affordability, the…