Quaker appointed to European peace post

Davorka Lovrekovic is to be the new general secretary of Church and Peace

The new general secretary of Church and Peace, the ecumenical peace church in Europe, is Hamburg Quaker Davorka Lovrekovic.

Church and Peace is an ecumenical network of Christian communities, churches and organisations in Europe committed to the peace church vision.

Davorka, who comes from a religious Croatian family that moved to Germany in 1966, is a member of German Yearly Meeting. She has many years of experience in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.

She currently works as a mediator and skilled organisational developer. She has been committed to nonviolent communication for a long time in her work with nonprofit organisations.

Since the mid-1980s Davorka has been involved with the German branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and until May 2012, was vice chair of the organisation. Davorka was one of the invited speakers at the EMEYF spring gathering held in Wehlen, near Dresden, in Germany earlier this year. The gathering focused on the theme of ‘Encouraging Community’.

At the gathering she shared some wisdom from a Quaker text: ‘In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives.’  (Parker Palmer in Quaker faith & practice 10.19)

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