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Pope Francis’s visit to Geneva, a centre of Protestantism, expresses “Christian unity”, the World Council of Churches chief told AFP, insisting the pontiff’s message of love and inclusion speaks across denominations.

The 81-year-old Argentine will visit the City of Calvin on Thursday at the invitation of the global inter-church organisation, which represents some 350 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican churches with around 500 million believers among them.

“It is a very important decision he made when he accepted the invitation. (It) says that the Roman Catholic Church has the same agenda as these other churches,” said WCC chief Olav Fykse Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran pastor.

“It is Christian unity in practice,” he added, in an interview ahead of the pope’s visit to help celebrate the WCC’s 70th anniversary.

The trip, he said, was “a sign of hope that even quite deep conflicts and divisions can be overcome through dialogue, through taking one and other seriously.”

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