Religions for Peace (RfP) is an association of women representing members of diverse religions in more than 100 countries. This independent organization is committed to mediating in religious conflicts worldwide. RfP will be fifty-years-old in 2020. The endeavors of these women is only now receiving international recognition.

It started half a century ago with a campaign to provide vocational training for young Brazilians. Today the Catholic social services association Kolping International is a worldwide network with some 400,000 members in more than 60 countries.

Burial sites in all cultures speak loudly of the prevailing values and beliefs of the societies that design them. Germany’s cemetery culture is unique. But it is currently changing. Many Germans are no longer choosing the time-honored cemetery for their final resting place; more and more people are seeking alternatives to the traditional family grave.

The Papa Francisco is the best-equipped hospital ship in Brazil’s Amazon Region. She was launched in August 2019. Her mission is to serve more than 1,000 isolated communities along the world’s longest river - villages where there is no hospital and no doctor.

Emissary, pastor and director: Life in the Holy Land is a life full of tension for Wolfgang Schmidt - invigorating, but also exhausting.

Creative Church, a German Lutheran foundation, has produced another musical for mass choirs: Martin Luther King - A Dream Changes the World. In a series of flashbacks the show sketches the life of the great American civil rights leader and Nobel laureate from the perspective of his fellow activists.

The churches of Europe are pretty empty generally. But in Indonesia, with its mainly Muslim population, Christian seminaries are overwhelmed with applicants. On a hill in the middle of the jungle on the island of Flores lies the world’s largest seminary. More than 1000 students study at Ledalero, and at least 600 of them are candidates for the priesthood.

NoonSong has been called “thirty minutes of heaven.” A choral concert but also a church service. Every Saturday, NoonSong features beautiful a cappella singing from centuries of sacred Christian music by the vocal ensemble ‘sirventes berlin’.

The Lutheran pastor Nikolaus Schneider held the highest office in the Evangelical Church in Germany, but his life has often been clouded by death. Aged 22, his daughter, Meike, died of leukemia. He preached at the memorial service for the victims of the crowd disaster at the 2010 Love Parade in Duisburg. Then his wife was diagnosed with cancer.

Dieter Vieweger is a Lutheran theologian and an archaeologist. He has been Director-General of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology in Jerusalem since 2005. With his infectious enthusiasm for unravelling the past, Professor Vieweger succeeds in fascinating young and old with his exploration of the Holy Land’s 5000-year-old history.

Those looking for a quiet retreat are unlikely to find it in Dusseldorf’s Dominican monastery. The monks there live in the heart of the city’s nightlife district. Their evening prayers are accompanied by drunken bawling from the street. Revelers and homeless people are a permanent challenge. How has this community of eight priests come to terms with their very unusual monastic environment?

"Mega, awesome, cool!" That was twelve-year-old Linus’s comment. He is one of 60,000 Catholic altar servers from across the world who made the pilgrimage to Rome this year to see the pope. With the Eternal City sweltering in temperatures around 40 degrees Celsius this summer it wasn’t always "cool." But nothing could stop these kids.

Finally declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Naumburg Cathedral is one of Germany’s finest churches - significant not only for its architectural splendor but because it contains a portrait of one of the great beauties of the Middle Ages: Margravine Uta von Ballenstedt. The statue was carved by a mediaeval stone sculptor who, in spite of his fame, is known to history only as the Naumburg Master.

A thousand years ago, the Benedictine abbey on the island of Reichenau was a center of scholarship. The monks created some of the finest illuminated manuscripts ever produced. But in the early 19th century, the religious community was expelled. In spite of secularisation, the islanders struggled to preserve the monks’ legacy and today Reichenau is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Moravian Church is one of the oldest Protestant denominations. Since the eighteenth century it has been sending missionaries to many parts of the world. In the former Dutch colony of Suriname, on the northeast coast of South America, the church is especially strong. Surinamese Moravians will be organizing the World Day of Prayer in March 2018.

The Lutheran School in Berlin doesn’t simply follow a curriculum; it is committed to Christian values. In classes called "Responsibility" and "Challenge," the students at ESBZ learn to act on their own initiative and to take responsibility for their own lives and for society.

Four Cistercian monks from Austria are bringing monastic life back to Neuzelle in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. The town's name comes from the Nova Cella abbey that was founded here in 1268. The building hasn't been used as a monastery for centuries, but the monks hope to restore its role as a spiritual center of Catholicism.

A woman is running the Vatican Museums for the first time in their 500-year history. One year ago, Pope Francis appointed the 56-year-old Italian art historian, Barbara Jatta, to manage the papal collections, which contain a staggering quarter-million objects and attract some six million visitors each year.

The internationally acclaimed Berlin Radio Choir has joined forces with American theater director and visual artist Robert Wilson for a production that marries Martin Luther’s writings and translations with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Wilson’s image theater conjures both anxiety and hope in a timeless statement that places Luther among the great thinkers of history.

As the Lutheran World Federation celebrates 500 years of Protestantism, Namibians remember a grim chapter of their history. Missionaries set sail for the future German colony of South West Africa in 1840 fired with the ideals of the Reformation. But their message of humble service prepared the way for economic exploitation - and a conflict that ended in genocide.

Most Russian Lutherans are ethnic Germans. Although services are now conducted in Russian, the "Our Father” is still prayed in the language of Luther. The Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Russia has some 40,000 members and is headed by 34-year-old Dietrich Brauer, the youngest archbishop in the Lutheran World Federation.

An inter-confessional church is one shared by Catholics and Protestants. The Reformation led to 2,000 of these "marriages of convenience”.

Some 300 years ago, the Lutheran pastor August Hermann Francke founded a charity school in Halle-on-the-Saale, about 200 kilometers southwest of Berlin. Today that foundation is an impressive complex of institutions - a veritable town within a town, providing accommodation and employment for more than 4,000 people.

Lourdes in southwest France is one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in the world. In May each year, thousands of military personnel from almost 50 countries flock to this Marian shrine. The pilgrims in uniform pray and sing - but they also find time to relax and make friends.

Lourdes in southwest France is one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in the world. In May each year, thousands of military personnel from almost 50 countries flock to this Marian shrine. The pilgrims in uniform pray and sing - but they also find time to relax and make friends.