The Pearl of Great Price

Send us Fan Mail Today we look at the unprecedent global journeys of John Paul II, a stampede at a mass in Fortaleza in North East Brazil and its Dom Helder Camara the bishop who spoke for the poor and instituted the pact of the Catacombs 

Send us Fan Mail John Templeton, one of the worlds most generous philanthropist was fascinated by religion and science.  His annual prize is bigger than the Nobel Prizes in monetary value as he felt that spirituality was ignored by the Nobels. 

Send us Fan Mail Alexander Solzhenitsyns book the Gulag Archipelago sold over 30million copies and did much to expose the cruelty and lies of Stalins Regime.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. This is the story of his own spiritual journey and conversion in the Gulag.

Send us Fan Mail How a young emigrant to USA had an experience of being born again, which prevented him from being bitter and gave him the resilience to build up one of Americas most famous companies.  His deep faith led him to share most of his wealth through tithing 

Send us Fan Mail The greatest mind of the 8th Century - changed how we read letters, and saved a lot of knowledge from Viking Destruction. Alcuin of York - a one man renaissance was the sun who shone over Europe 

Send us Fan Mail Today we remember the disappearance of Aimee McPherson a remarkable and pioneering evangelist. And how she reappeared 5 weeks later in the Mexican Desert ... what happened? 

Send us Fan Mail The Jesuit explorer Jacques Marquette and the Canadian Fur Trapper Louis Joillet were the first to explore and map the Mississipi - they embarked today and this is their story 

Send us Fan Mail Did a Celtic Monk called Brendan cross the Atlantic 1000 years before Columbus? 

Send us Fan Mail Rerum Novarum was described as ground breaking - the foundational encyclical on Catholic Social Teaching. The only encyclical to spawn to follow up encyclicals as the Church tries to tread a middle line between Capitalism and Socialism 

Send us Fan Mail The infamous Salem Witch trials are now understood to be a bout of Puritan Mass Hysteria - and some historians argue lead to the end of experimental theocracies in the USA 

Send us Fan Mail Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca  came millimeters from killing John Paul II today by shooting him four times at close range in St Peters Square.  We look at the theories about why it happened and their relationship afterwards 

Send us Fan Mail On a thanksgiving pilgrimage to Fatima Pope John Paul II was attacked by a ultra-conservative priest brandishing a bayonet. Why was the Pope there in the first place? What was he giving thanks for? 

Send us Fan Mail We look at the life of Comgall, his student Columbanus and the distinctive form of Christian Community that emerged in Ireland.  We also look at how that had shaped the universal church. 

Send us Fan Mail The greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th Century, today we look at the life and thought of Karl Barth 

Send us Fan Mail Today we remember the killing of Aldo Moro, former prime minister of Italy and how it tested the faith of an old friend Pope Paul VI 

Send us Fan Mail A story of the savage French Revolution - its attempt to de-Christianise France and how a humble priest rebuilt the spiritual lives of his parishioners after. Jean Vianney would become the patron saint of priests

Send us Fan Mail At the turn of the Millennium the first Slavic Pope, John Paul II made bug steps towards reconciliation with the Orthodox Church. This covers his visit to Romania

Send us Fan Mail Today we look at infamous Scopes Monkey Trial and the attempt to overthrow the Butler Act which prohibited teaching evolution in schools.  Also how the anti-evolution movement evolved into a Christian Science movement

Send us Fan Mail Its been described as the most stolen piece of art, the first great oil painting of the Northern Renaissance. A complex multi-panelled painting laced with Catholic Theology. Recovered by the famous monuments men in the second world war after Hitler had hid it in a salt mine. 

Send us Fan Mail Today Alexander VI, the infamous Borgia Pope, issued a papal bull which drew up a line of demarcation dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal

Send us Fan Mail Today we look at the birth of Uriah Smith and Seventh Day Adventism.  Emerging out of a failed prophecy of the End of the World we look at his writings about the Book of Revelation. 

Send us Fan Mail The last polymath of the renaissance era was Fr Antanasius Kircher SJ. Among his many accomplishments he was the first to look at the blood of bubonic plague victims under a microscope and to realise that the 'pestis' was contagious. He suggested Quarantine, wearing masks and burning the clothes of victims. 

Send us Fan Mail Perhaps the Westerner who did more to shape thinking about Africa then anyone else. Both a father of European Colonialism and a forerunner of African Nationalism. He died today and this is his story. 

Send us Fan Mail The Polish Mystic Faustina Kowalska was declared a saint in the presence of 200,000 people today and the first Divine Mercy Sunday was celebrated worldwide.  We look at her short but spiritually intense life.  How the devotion to the divine mercy has spread around the world. Finally we also look at the evil that was perpetrated a few years later, in the neighbouring parts of Polan...

Send us Fan Mail The teenage illiterate peasant girl who saved France, inspired by courage and faith.  We look at some of her story today, how she found herself in the corridors of power.  A totemic figure that turned the tide in the Hundred Years War, she was eventually caught and executed,  The Vatican would overturn the ecclesial show trial 40years later and eventually declare her a Saint.