On July the 11th every year, the bodies of those who Sasa helped to identify over the past 12 months are re-buried in a Muslim service and Anna will witness the ceremony at the sprawling Potocari Cemetery and meet the families on a pilgrimage to honour the ones they loved and lost. Anna Holligan has listened to the details of unspeakable terror as the BBC’s correspondent in The Hague and will travel to the scenes of Mladic’s crimes to meet the Muslim families still haunted by the war of 25 years...
Jul 27, 2018•27 min
Founded in the 15th century on a remote archipelago in the White Sea, Solovetsky monastery (or “Solovki”) was once one of Russia’s most religious sites. But in the 20th century Solovki gained notoriety as the “Mother of Gulags” – the first and most brutal of the concentration camps of the Soviet time, a stark embodiment of repression. With the fall of the communism in the early 1990's, the monastery was re-established though and a small group of monks were allowed to settle. Monks and historians...
Jul 24, 2018•27 min
At the end of a week when President Donald Trump visited European countries, immigration was one of the many issues which has made the headlines The President used his visit to say that immigration has "changed the fabric of Europe" and that "allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad.” Across the globe the faithful are divided in their view on immigrants and both sides use scripture to defend their positions. The Pope has used the word ‘immoral’ in relation t...
Jul 16, 2018•26 min
Uzbekistan - the most populous country in Central Asia is, is sometimes called the country of a hundred shrines or the “second Mecca”. It is home to hundreds of well-preserved mosques, madrasas, bazaars and mausoleums, dating largely from the 9th to the 17th centuries, almost untarnished by the time. In fact, many shrines find their roots in pre-Islamic and pagan times. The strict Soviet anti-religion stance couldn’t stop believers from paying respect their holy sites of pilgrimage. Neither coul...
Jun 30, 2018•26 min
Across the United States communities are growing of people choosing to live, work and worship together. Colm Flynn takes to the farms and fields to meet the Muslims, Christians and even a Druid who want to show their faith through a shared love of farming. He travels to the states of New Jersey, Wisconsin and Michigan to meet the diverse groups who express their faith through getting their hands dirty. In the summer heat as they celebrate the holy month of Ramadan, Trinka tells Colm how she hope...
Jun 22, 2018•26 min
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program contains images and voices of people who have died. From next year tourists will not be allowed to climb Uluru in the Australian outback. It comes after years of campaigning by the owners of the site, the Anangu Aborigines. The Anangu date their origins back 60,000 years and claim a deep and ancient link between the rock and their spirituality. Climbing has violated that, they say; it's like tourists clambering ...
Jun 08, 2018•27 min
The community of Anatevka near the Ukrainian capital Kiev has been created to especially welcome Jews from war-torn Eastern Ukraine. Construction started in 2015, and it was named after a hometown of Tevye the Dairyman, from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof". There is no requirement for the refugees who settle in Anatevka to be observant Jews. Many of them had no chance to practice their religion in what was then the atheistic Soviet Union. Olga Smirnova follows them as they observe Jewish relig...
May 25, 2018•27 min
This is a story of a community trying to heal, but a warning; there are descriptions of abuse in this programme that may be upsetting. Pope Francis is refusing to bow to pressure to apologise to Canada's indigenous people for the Catholic church's abuse of thousands of children For more than 100 years First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to these church-run boarding schools. Many were beaten, starved and sexually abused. They were forbidden from...
May 18, 2018•27 min
The following programme tells the story of a mass shooting in a small church in Sutherland Springs Texas and how it affected the faith of the community and the church's pastor Frank Pomeroy. A warning, there are graphic and potentially upsetting references to the shooting throughout the programme. As a gun man calmly walked into his church during its normal Sunday service and shot dead 26 of his parishioners, including his 14 year old daughter, Pastor Frank Pomeroy, was absent, miles away from h...
May 14, 2018•27 min
Morocco's Jewish community was once the biggest in the Muslim world. More than a quarter of a million Jews called the North African country home. Most Moroccan Jews left after the establishment of Israel in 1940s and 50s. The understanding between the two religious communities, who used to live side by side, has slowly been forgotten. Young people especially feel a growing disconnect with the communities of the past. Many Muslim Moroccan's are bringing a middle eastern Islam to the country; diff...
May 06, 2018•28 min
Marie-Louise Muir tells the story of the Nun Study; a pioneering study, started in America in the 1980s, which brought a young epidemiologist together with a group of Catholic Sisters to examine the mysteries of ageing and Alzheimer’s. In 1986 Dr David Snowdon approached the sisters at the convent of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Minnesota. An order of Catholic sisters with their uniform life-styles were perfect for an examination of the ageing process. It was the beginning of a study whic...
Apr 27, 2018•27 min
Warning: The following programme tells the stories of the child soldiers who took part in Indonesia’s religious conflict that erupted in the Moluccas in 1999. It is ultimately about peace and reconciliation, but a warning, there are graphic and potentially upsetting references to violence committed during that period Hundreds of child militants are believed to have taken part in Indonesia’s bloodiest religious conflict. On the island of Ambon there were roughly the same number of Christians and ...
Apr 23, 2018•27 min
How is faith tested at our weakest and most vulnerable moments? When Caroline Wyatt was 12 years old she announced she wanted to be the first female Pope. With that career path closed off to her she became a journalist and eventually the BBC’s Religious Affairs correspondent, going onto meet Pope Francis on a foreign trip She now has Multiple Sclerosis, sending her spiralling into doubt about her faith. In a deeply personal programme she shares the battle she is fighting with her own body and he...
Apr 17, 2018•27 min
Jerusalem is the most religiously contentious city in the world On the weekend that Easter coincides with Passover and after President Trump’s controversial declaration of it as the capital of Israel, Lipika Pelham takes a journey around this contested city, talking to Jerusalemites who tell her how their faiths and lives are interconnected. She meets the Muslim who for 40 years has kept the Dome of the Rock clean, the devoted Jews praying at the sacred walls to explore how they are waiting at t...
Apr 01, 2018•27 min
John McCarthy was held hostage for five years in Lebanon; it would test not only of his mental resolve but also his faith. In this three-part season for Heart and Soul John meets three people of three different religions held against their will. John talks to them about how their faith sustained them in their darkest hours of captivity, including physical and psychological torture. John shares his own experiences of being held in Beirut and how for him, the Bible was a crucial source of informat...
Mar 18, 2018•27 min
John McCarthy was held hostage for five years in Lebanon; it would test not only of his mental resolve but also his faith. In this three-part season for Heart and Soul, John meets three people of three different religions held against their will. John talks to them about how their faith sustained them in their darkest hours of captivity, including physical and psychological torture. John shares his own experiences of being held in Beirut and how for him, the Bible was a crucial source of informa...
Mar 13, 2018•27 min
John McCarthy was held hostage for five years in Lebanon; it would test not only of his mental resolve but also his faith. In this three-part season for Heart and Soul John meets three people of three different religions held against their will. John talks to them about how their faith sustained them in their darkest hours of captivity, including physical and psychological torture. John shares his own experiences of being held in Beirut and how for him, the Bible was a crucial source of informat...
Mar 04, 2018•27 min
Libby Phelps is the granddaughter of the founder of Westboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps. Nicknamed “America’s Most Hated Family”, the church in Kansas became infamous for telling homosexuals they were going to hell and picketing the funerals of US soldiers. But it was after the church rejoiced in the attacks of 11 September, that Libby questioned her faith, packed her bags and left - she escaped from the church. Today she now advocates for the LGBT community, the people she once condemned to he...
Feb 25, 2018•27 min
Sasha Chanoff is a humanitarian worker descended from Jewish great-grandparents who fled the early 20th Century pogroms in Russia and settled in the United States. The story of his courageous and resourceful great-grandmother inspired Sasha to work with refugees in war-torn parts of Africa. And it was there, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, that he faced a life-or-death choice. Then, in his mid-20s, Sasha was part of a small rescue team deployed to evacuate 112 Tutsi survivors of a massacre....
Jan 26, 2018•27 min
Germany has gained itself the role as Europe’s great provider of sanctuary for some of the millions of refugees that have fled from the most troubled parts of the world. But Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under fierce criticism over the million plus people who’ve sought asylum over the past two years, leading to her having to fight over the past days to retain her seemingly invincible power. Churches, both Protestant and Catholic are defying the state and public opinion by opening their doors...
Jan 14, 2018•26 min
Naco Christian Church serves a small but devout congregation, Jesse Wood, its pastor spends hours in his pick-up, driving around meeting and praying with his parishioners. His journey routinely takes him across the US – Mexico border, because his church straddles these two countries Division and misunderstanding are real and potential problems. Pastor Jesse responds by using the gospels to teach that all barriers must be done away with, not by disregarding or destroying boundaries but by learnin...
Jan 07, 2018•27 min
At the darkest time of the year in Iceland scary creatures come out to play. Storyteller Andri Snaer Magnason used to be terrified by his grandmother's Christmas tales of Gryla, the hag who eats children, and her 13 troll sons - the Yule Lads - who would come down from the mountains looking for naughty children in the warmth of their homes. These dark lullabies partly hark back to a pre-Christian Christmas when the Norse gods dominated peoples’ lives. As Iceland opens up to global influences aft...
Dec 29, 2017•27 min
The lives of young Palestinian Christians are being transformed by this ancient spiritual art. At the heart of Bethlehem's old city sits the Bethlehem Icon Centre, a school training local Palestinian Christians to become icon painters - some of them to a professional standard. Unique in the Middle East, the school is best known for Our Lady of the Wall, a large-scale, striking image of the Virgin Mary painted onto the Israeli security barrier. Its founder is a British icon painter, Ian Knowles, ...
Dec 22, 2017•27 min
Charlottesville in the American state of Virginia, was thrust into the limelight in the late summer when white supremacists groups violently clashed with counter demonstrators The city is Jane Little’s home town, and she will find that even before the events of the summer, religious leaders had been long been mobilizing against alt-right groups following two previous demonstrations. The tactics they are taught mirror those used by leaders of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. As the violen...
Dec 17, 2017•27 min
Pastor Daniel Habteys journey to becoming a church leader in the north of England has taken him through the toughest of tests. In 2002 he fled persecution and imprisonment in his native Eritrea because of his Christian faith. After spending a fortnight crossing the Sahara Desert in the back of a pick-up truck, he, his wife and their baby daughter almost lost their lives while making the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean to Italy. Now, he leads English and Eritrean worship at his churc...
Dec 10, 2017•28 min
Old Belief communities formed as a result of Russian Orthodox Church theological reforms of the 17th century. After a period of torture and mass executions and unrecognised by the state, Old Believers were forced to go underground or move to unreachable parts of this vast country, where they lived independent of state and official church. The Revolution of 1917 led to a further exodus – even as far as Latin America. In the last decade, the population decline led the Russian government to invite ...
Nov 26, 2017•26 min
Baktash Noori is a 23-year-old practising Muslim Mancunian YouTube vlogger. He lives just five minutes drive from the Manchester Arena where, six months ago, 22 people were killed by suicide bomber. In the days after the attack his parents were warning him to stay off the streets, worried that the colour of his skin and his faith would make him a target for attack. Instead Baktash took to the Manchester streets, blindfolded, with a cardboard sign inviting people to give him a hug. Scared of the ...
Nov 19, 2017•27 min
Audrey Brown is in South Africa to meet Pastor Xola Skosana. After nearly 20 years of ministering to a congregation impoverished by the legacy of apartheid he has rejected his Christian faith. It is a controversial message and uncomfortable for many Christians, but it is a message which has tapped into a bigger narrative in this troubled country. We hear how Xola struggled with his faith, and why he no longer sees his faith in the white Jesus of the established church.
Nov 15, 2017•27 min
Mercy Amba-Oduoye is a true reformer; in fact in her native Ghana she embodies the phrase. She is called the Mother of African Feminist Christian Theology and is globally recognised as the leader of a movement that has constantly challenged the male preconception of being ‘a good girl’ a phrase in Africa which means not questioning the established role and place of young women. In the third programme in the special season on Heart and Soul focussing on reforming faith, Anne Soy travels to Accra,...
Oct 30, 2017•27 min
Dotted around London, in the concentrated areas where Orthodox Jews have made their home, groups of believers meet to pray and share their faith. Nothing unusual in that, but what make these gatherings significant are that women are leading the prayers, and they are sharing their celebration with men, These prayer groups are called Partnership Minyans, and have become a symbol of a major shift in Judaism making many traditional believers extremely uncomfortable With a panel in London, Emma Barne...
Oct 22, 2017•27 min
