Fraternal delegates are official delegates, who attend major assemblies of a friendly body as a formal expression of the fraternal bonds.
In politics, that is customary among
fraternal parties.
In religion, it happens between churches engaged in an ecumenical process. Thus the Holy See invited to Rome for the Roman Catholic Church's 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in October 2015, on family, 'fraternal' delegates from Orthodox churches (
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (, ; ; , "Roman Orthodox Patriarchate, Ecumenical Patriarchate of Istanbul") is one of the fifteen to seventeen autocephalous churches that together compose the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is heade ...
,
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...
,
Serbian Orthodox Church
The Serbian Orthodox Church ( sr-Cyrl-Latn, Српска православна црква, Srpska pravoslavna crkva) is one of the autocephalous (ecclesiastically independent) Eastern Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church#Constit ...
,
Romanian Orthodox Church
The Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC; , ), or Romanian Patriarchate, is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox Christian denomination, Christian churches, and one of the nine patriarchates in the East ...
,
Albanian Orthodox Church
The Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania (), commonly known as the Albanian Orthodox Church or the Orthodox Church of Albania, is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox church. It declared its autocephaly in 1922 through its Congress of 1922, a ...
,
Coptic Orthodox Church
The Coptic Orthodox Church (), also known as the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, is an Oriental Orthodox Christian church based in Egypt. The head of the church and the See of Alexandria is the pope of Alexandria on the Holy Apo ...
,
Syriac Orthodox Church
The Syriac Orthodox Church (), also informally known as the Jacobite Church, is an Oriental Orthodox Christian denomination, denomination that originates from the Church of Antioch. The church currently has around 4-5 million followers. The ch ...
) and Protestant churches (Anglican Communion,
World Lutheran Federation,
Ecumenical Council of Churches,
World Evangelical Alliance
The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is an interdenominational organization of evangelical Christian churches with 600 million adherents that was founded in 1846 in London, England, to unite evangelicals worldwide. WEA is the largest internati ...
,
World Methodist Council
The World Methodist Council (WMC), founded in 1881, is a consultative body that represents churches within Methodism and facilitates cooperation among its member denominations. It comprises 80 denominations in 138 countries which together repres ...
, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and
World Baptist Alliance).
Ecumenical councils
Political terminology
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