Desmond Tutu: 'We can only be human together'

"A united church is no optional extra," said Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an impassioned speech to the World Council of Churches 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre. Rather, he said, it is "indispensable for the salvation of God's world".

Tutu's audience had just taken part in a plenary session on church unity. He referred to the film "The defiant ones", in which two convicts, one black and one white, escape handcuffed together. "We too can only make it together - we can only be safe together," he said. "We can be prosperous only together. We can survive only together. We can be human only together." (...)