“There is one body and one spirit,
Just as you were called to the one hope
Of your calling”
Eph 4:4
I heard it said that coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. Whether that is true or not is insignificant. What is significant is that God’s providence, admittedly at times hard to observe, is nonetheless active.
Having said that, one notes a series of coincidences in the 2026 observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and the centenary of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA).
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, originally the Church Unity Octave, was founded in 1908 by Servant of God Paul Wattson, co-founder of the Society of the Atonement, a religious community of men and women dedicated to Christian unity and interfaith dialogue. At the time, the Church Unity Octave was one of the few Catholic responses to the pressing need for Christian unity emerging in some of the Protestant and Orthodox churches at the time. Over the years, the Week of Prayer evolved and developed under the influence of committed Catholic and non-Catholic ecumenists and, not least of all, “Unitatis redintegratio” (Decree on Ecumenism) of Vatican II. Presently, the Week of Prayer is observed by Christians worldwide.
The annual theme and program are created by a joint committee of the Holy See and the World Council of Churches. Each year a different church is chosen to help develop the observance and add a particular “flavor” to the observance. The church chosen for the 2026 observance is the ancient Armenian Apostolic Church, centered in Etchmiadzin, Armenia.
A few years after the first observance of what would become the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 1908, World War I began (July 1914-November 1918). A result of the war was the ultimate dissolution of the centuries-old Ottoman Empire that, at its height, extended from Persia in the east to the gates of Vienna in the west and from Vienna in the north to Mecca in the south.
Although the Ottoman Empire was a Muslim polity, it was diverse religiously, including not only Muslims but Jews, Zoroastrians and almost every imaginable Christian denomination. However, as the empire suffered economic and military setbacks during the war, its leaders persecuted its Christians, especially in the eastern part of the empire. It is estimated that in the years 1915-1916, more than a million Armenian Christians alone were displaced in death marches through inhospitable terrain, most were slaughtered in what is widely considered the first genocide of the 20th century.
During these years of turbulence — in part because of their interest in Christian unity — Father Wattson and Bishop George Calavassy, Greek Catholic exarch in Constantinople, formed a partnership and worked to acquire and deliver material aid to help the Armenian, Greek and Syriac Christian survivors who found refuge in the former Ottoman capital. In 1924, this partnership was formalized in the founding of CNEWA. For several reasons, not least of which was the scope and importance of the mission, Pope Pius XI reorganized this American initiative in 1926, and reestablished it as an agency of the Holy See to support all of the Eastern churches, coupling it with the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Churches and placing under the immediate episcopal direction of the archbishops of New York.
A century later, CNEWA continues its mission working among the Eastern churches, Catholic and non-Catholic, including the Armenian and Assyro-Chaldean Christians of the Caucasus and the Middle East.
Although the tragedies of early 20th century are history, there remains an “Arc of Conflict and Suffering” that extends from Iran though Azerbaijan, Armenia to Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, even as the Week of Prayer 2026 and CNEWA’s centenary are being observed.
The “coincidence” of both observances this year provides opportunities to be grateful to God for incredible accomplishments and heroic figures who have accomplished so much in the past one hundred years. However, it also reminds us of the work still to be done. The Arc of Conflict and Suffering still exists and at times appears to be getting worse.