police in sri lanka investigating a series of devastating bomb attacks which killed more than 200 people in churches and luxury hotels have made 13 arrests. a curfew's in place and social media curbed. the authorities say most of the coordinated blasts were suicide attacks. the comedian and actor volodymyr zelensky has won a landslide victory in ukraine's presidential election. full results are not yet in but his rival, the incumbent petro poroshenko, acknowledged defeat after exit polls showed mr zelensky had won about 70% of the vote. the leaders of the protests that led to the ousting of sudan's former president say they have suspended talks and cooperation with the transitional military council that's running the country. they urged demonstrators to continue their peaceful sit—ins until a transition to a civilian government was achieved. now on bbc news, it's time

for dateline london. hello and welcome to dateline london. i'm carrie gracie. this week, it's easter weekend for two billion christians — the world's biggest group of religious believers. in the early 21st century, our world is becoming more religious, not less. muslims are not far behind christians in numbers. in third place come more than a billion hindus. then buddhists at about half a billion, with folk religionsjust behind, and smaller groups including sikhs and jews bringing up the rear. surveys suggest more than 84% of all humans identify with a religious group. so in today's programme, we focus on how religion

impacts our world. my guests: catherine pepinster, former editor of catholic weekly newspaper, the tablet. african affairs analyst dr vincent magombe, nesrine malik, of the guardian newspaper, and canadian writer broadcaster jeffrey kofman. welcome to you all. i started talking about religious affiliations, let's quickly go round the table. muslim. christian, practising catholic. catholic with a little bit of an african touch. i'm jewish but culturally, not practising. let's deal with why religion is still so powerful in our world. catherine, do you want to start? there are various reasons for the individual. having a religion means people's search for meaning is perhaps fulfilled, they find values and community and hope.

for many, it is about the fact of life is not all that there is, for individuals religion matters greatly. history means religions, some religions have become huge institutions and that is a whole other ball game. we will talk about that in a moment. jeffrey, as a no longer practising jew, do you find that you find it surprising religion is still as powerful as it is? no, ithink no, i think it is true. people search for a commonality and community and i would like to believe that we all, in some form, whatever our values, seek to follow our better angels and i think religion helps people do that, at its best. christianity is receding in north america and europe, it is

growing elsewhere, islam, however, is the fastest growing religion, why do you think that is? the first is demographics, islamic generally overlaps with countries where there is a high birth rate, but there is an additional element that has been the case for, as far as i can remember, when i first realised it, it was probably 30 years ago, islam was also the only religion that was growing, not due to demographics, but due to conversion, there is a high degree of conversion to islam. i'm not sure why that is the case. i think in some areas it's because islam tends to, for example on indian subcontinent, tends to be adjacent to several other religions so there is intermarriage and lots of conversion because of intermarriage. the second thing is i think there is a very powerful and effective proselytising element to islam, lots of funding behind lots of the religious schools and mosques and they do outreach into the community. which brings people

into the religion. and vincent, africa, almost in a class of its own in terms of people's commitment to their religion. whether the religion is islam or christianity or other folk beliefs. the thing is, in africa you have to look at it from the historical perspective. when christianity came we had our own religions and own courts and things that are still there, we go to church, i am a very strong catholic, i go to church, but outside, where nobody sees me, i will still be worshipping my gods. worshipping what gods? traditional african gods. how do you do that? the nature of african religions is not like your religions when you go to church and things like that, african religions are functional.

if you go to nigeria, you will have a god for war or if you go to nigeria, you will have a god forwarora if you go to nigeria, you will have a god for war or a god for workmanship or, you know, when kids are born, there are some religious things you do. it's very functional. you sort of harvest your produce, they will worship some god or goddess of the earth or something like that. african religions are very functional in nature and perhaps that's one of the reasons they were very quickly overpowered by christianity, which was very organised, they took us and put us into catholic schools and churches as children and told us, your story about the beginning of the world, the purpose of your earth, it's not right. and they gave us christianity. in christianity, with all these ten commandments, it's a very good thing, i look at africans as broken people, i would rather want to see we can become christians

and worship but we should also be very free to worship other gods. in the modern way, to make more functional type of benefits. i would take issue with the notion religion is on the rise globally. these are figures coming from pew research, this is what it suggests but it may not be the whole story. i covered latin america for ten years for abc news and 50 years ago more than 90% of latin america, the largest concentration of catholics, identified as catholic, today it is around 59%. in some latin american countries it is less than 50%. i remember whenjohn paul ii died i was in mexico city and we did a series of stories about the roman catholic church in latin america, and what i found was you have one priest with a parish of 50,000 people. the numbers are impossible to reconcile.

there was this spiritual drift, inevitably because of that, not to mention modernity itself. and the rise of evangelicals and fundamentalists and pentecostals in place. but, in fact, in latin america the fastest growing religious sector is the people who identify as not religious. i'm glad you came to that because in the same pew research i mentioned, 84% telling the surveyors they are believers and i6% are non—believers, a significant proportion, even under those numbers, why do you think some people are susceptible to religious belief and organisation and others not? modernity has a lot to do with drifting and questioning, it's easy for others to find other gods and other ways to get values or to abandon values.

i think when the world was small and we didn't travel, our community was a very narrow and we wanted to be part of it and that has been fractured by globalisation and the last 100 years. especially since world war i. the question that comes to mind when you posit that question is a person like me still in shock, i've been here for 20 something years but i cannot understand is happening with this research and society, in the west, in the uk... north america and europe, which are declining in religious belief. yeah, you brought this religion to us, you brought christianity... ididn't... western society brought these religions to us but how come today nigeria is exporting missionaries to britain, to europe? when i go to churches, some churches are very vibra nt and whatever, but

others you go and you just wonder where are the people? the young people out there roving around, they don't know it's sunday. in africa they are still praying and it is still growing. it is a problem vincent raises, a question for european religious leaders as well, when they look at the figures and by some predictions china will be the biggest, the largest number of christians which is an openly atheist society, a communist society, they have the largest number of christians. the thing that vincent has mentioned, his experience of people coming into the uk and to other countries in an increasingly secular europe is in turn those people are a benefit to the churches because they help fill the pews but they are also a challenge to secular society because of the values they bring with them which are not always quite the norm,

as secular britain has them. then he mentioned china and it makes one wonder the extent to which religions thrive when under pressure because of course we are seeing the growth of christianity in china at the same time as the chinese government is trying to suppress it. it is one of the biggest areas of religious growth for christianity. do they thrive because that faith means something to them and they are holding on to it? that brings us to another big question, and i want to pose it in a way to all of you which is presumably religions will thrive when religious leaders and organisations tackle the huge challenges of the time for individuals and society. let me throw this one to you, do you think the current faith leaders are addressing the big issues and where do you think they are succeeding and where are they failing? it is a chicken and egg answer.

i think this ties into your earlier question, religions tend to thrive, in my experience, when there is a network, when there is a ready—made lattice of community and framework of people because religion does not thrive when it is just individuals, atomised individuals. that's why it's growing in africa and china, in areas where globalisation has not yet completely fractured the extended family unit. and so sometimes it is a good thing when people get the chance to question religion or think about religion in ways that are notjust overlapping with their family or networks, they become more intelligent about it. to answer your second question, which is how, is it because of leaders, i'm not entirely sure. i think leaders, in my experience, tend to manipulate religion for more political purposes, they tend

to define it through their own eyes. i struggled a lot growing up in saudi arabia with how saudis interpreted islam, which which is quite hardline, not the more symbiotic african islam that i grew up with, which was borrowing from arab and african influences. so i think it tends to thrive more when the grassroots or the firmament for the grassroots is there, rather than when it is imposed or manipulated from above. you can get a synthetic sense of religious growth in the religious leaders but i think that is more of a political organisation rather than a spiritual one. and yet, catherine, the catholic church, there is a religious organisation with a very clear principle of leadership, in the past couple of days in the run—up to easter, pope francis washing the feet of prisoners, his easter message, so

much about the poor and the miserable and the deprived, it is the framing of social and economic and political life which is very much about the needs of the powerless. since the growth of communism in the 19th century and the development of marxism, the catholic church has striven to offer the world teaching that focuses very much on society, and it has something within its teaching code social sin and that's obviously rooted in what christ says and the gospels. one thing that intrigues me about where we are at with the catholic church in the wider world at the moment is what pope francis has to say about climate change, for example, reconciliation, bringing people together from south sudan recently in the vatican, or poverty or peace, many people, including non—catholics, find that attractive, but what they do not find attractive are religious leaders trying to say something to them about their own personal sexual morality, certainly in the west, that is completely out the door for so many.

we have this almost schizophrenic approach to religion, that what religion is saying in a more global area is many people find it attractive but in the personal people do not like it. i would think, as a questioning catholic, not because i do not believe, i believe, lam questioning how catholicism has grown into the world and whether it is actually dealing with the challenges of modernity. i mean, i cannot understand that today the catholic church still says priests should not marry. why not? 0r nuns? so these are some of the issues i think need courage — and we've seen

different popes come, some are very traditionally orientated, the current pope is very modernistic in certain ways, and perhaps they need to address those issues. that's the distinction between cultural religious religions that allow much more cultural practice, likejudaism, and i look upon myjewish friends who are culturaljews, and i kind of envy them because they get all the comfort of the religion without any of the didactic problems or the soul—searching or the guilt. and i think there is less space, actually, in very institutionalised religions, such as catholicism that has lost lots of good will with child abuse issues, because it is an institution, and a kind of corporate structure, at the end of the day, we think the problem with that is when there is no, when there is little

space for one to become a cultural muslim or catholic orjew, then it becomes a zero—sum game. there is definitely an issue in islam where it is very binary — you cannot think one should try and be a cultural muslim and see what is comforting from there, but because it has these very hard—line rules and apostacy, leaving religion etc, then any soul—searching becomes burdened with this issue of leaving your religion, which is not necessarily the case. you all raise very fascinating questions. jeffrey, why don't you deal with the question of not when the individual struggles with their failure to adjust or their institution, their religious organisation, but when the organisation you belong to fails to live up to its own values, which we've seen quite a lot. clearly, if you look in the usa, the evangelicals, who represent

about 18% of the population in the us and more than 80% of whom voted for donald trump, the largest percentage of evangelical support of any president, more than george w bush, himself was born again. and you try to reconcile donald trump's behaviour and what he has said in his attitudes towards women and the coarseness and the things that are shocking in that man, and how people can do that. the evangelicals will say, their leadership will say, but he is delivering what we want, he is clamping down on abortion, clamping down on all the things we value, we want to see, and has put two very conservative judges on the supreme court, it is a triumph for us. the other side would say at what cost? have you sold your

souls to win this? there is no way this man is a paragon of any religious value of any mainstream religion or any marginal religion, for that matter. that is this huge hypocrisy. we have this interesting rise of this young candidate in the democratic race, pete buttigieg, who is 37 years old, from indiana, a practising episcopalian, openly gay, and a veteran, an army veteran, who has the most extraordinary — rhodes scholar — resume and who is trying to now take back the notion that all religious conservatives are republicans, saying, there is a current of social progressiveness that is part of christianity and i want to speak for that. historically that existed in the us but gradually dissipated over the past a0 years. which raises questions of all the overlap between religion and politics and people's agendas, vincent. let me just tell you that the best time i've had this year was when the catholic church in congo, drc, led the revolution that forced the president to give up

— he was trying to go for many years. that is what we need. that's when i talk about the church and the leaders of the church addressing modern—day problems, that is a very clear area. in africa, where we have lack of democracy, dictators going for hundreds of years until they die, refusing to go, the church can play a crucial and critical role. like they did recently... are you talking, this is another socially progressive church of the dispossessed kind of thing? oh, yes. it was the catholic church in drc — we have the catholic church in uganda, they are quiet, sometimes they speak in so many other countries, often they are quiet, it depends what they want to do. apparently the pope blessed them and said that's a very good thing, go ahead, you are doing the right thing. i think we should have it as a norm you are addressing issues of poverty

and all those things. but today the critical issue of politics, lack of democracy, the church can play a big role in challenging the lack of democracy. catherine, when religious organisations fall short of their own values, for the catholic church, as a global institution, this has been a very significant problem, an organisation which is, what are the conditions in which an organisation does not live up to its values? well, we have seen the catholic church not living up to its values when it comes to child abuse — i mean, it has been a global scandal. it has wounded it and scarred it in terms of its reputation, it has shattered it in many ways. in that sense, that is a church that has not lived up to its own values and its reputation and is going to have to rebuild. and many people have been very

alienated by what has happened. so it is a question of the church losing many members, who have walked away because of this, and lives that have been ruined. it has got to find a way forward and it's taking a very long time to do that. and obviously there are some places where the catholic... to talk about the conditions in which religious leaders can play a constructive role in a societies politically, socially, economically, some theocracies seem to become intolerant of alternative religions — christianity, whatever — and in other societies muslims and christians seem much more able to live alongside each other, i don't know if you can put your finger on the conditions which make it possible for different religious organisations to cohabit and cooperate. in my experience it is almost always political, almost always if there has been a politicalfigure

who has agitated and increased splits between them. i grew up in sudan, which had a large coptic minority when i was there and i remember growing up with coptic friends, my best friend was coptic, we would go to church when they had the ceremonies, and i had no idea this was any sort of sectarian issue. when a sharia government came into power in 1989, we began to see prosecution of copts because it was useful to the government to create an exclusive view of what the senior religion is, which was islam, according to their view. so we saw hundreds of years of peaceful coexistence disappear within ten, 15 years, the coptic community disappeared in that period in sudan.

and so, you hear stories as well from my parents and grandparents about the greek coptic family down the road, the hindu or sikh family that moved from india 300 years ago, and lived in the middle of sudan, and i think it's incredible because it was never in my experience after this government. and so i think where religions grew organically and cohabited without the national figure at the top wanted to project a certain view of the nation, that has been largely successful, not to deny there has been sectarian issues, but they do tend to get worse when there is a political figure. we are running out of time and i do want to just look briefly at the future. to a moment when humans are possibly not the most intelligent species on the planet, because we're so used to thinking ourselves as the smartest, we make tools, we can run rules, and with al,

some look forward and say maybe there will be a messiah in the future who will be all—seeing, all—hearing, you as a believer you will be able to speak to them and they will listen to you, i don't know if any of you want to deal with that kind of sense of an ai god. i think mobile phones have become, not for the better, have become the gods of so many. they create this sense, false, artificial sense of community and sense of belonging and also the sense of polarised, echo chamber of values which is causing such troubles today which are reinforcing stereotypes and not challenging our own assumptions. very interesting point. it is the century—old conflict between science and religion. whoever will be more strategic, tactical, address issues for humanity will win. i'm therefore not surprised in societies like here where people

are so advanced with their mobile phones and everything, they start losing the other side of religion. one last question, just a sentence from each of you, an easter message. two words — get off—line. my easter message comes from that incredible photograph from notre—dame of the interior of the cathedral — dark, rubble everywhere, all the burnt wood from the roof and a cross glowing in the middle — so my message is there is a light that shines in the darkness. may the god that we know or we don't know help us to liberate countries. we live in a pluralistic society where religion — where we tolerate and support and protect religion, but that comes with the cost of tolerating people who disagree,

and it is not ok to enter a pluralistic society like the uk to cherry pick what parts of society you want. i hear you all. thank you all forjoining us today. that's it for dateline london for this week — we're back next week at the same time. goodbye. hello. there are weather changes on the way this week, but we're going to see out the last day of this holiday weekend with plenty more sunshine and warmth. and what a weekend it's been! good friday, 2a degrees. saturday, 25.5. then, for easter sunday, in the sunshine it was the warmest easter sunday on record in scotland, northern ireland and in wales.

the record in england, 25.3, still stands. it came close to that, just topping out at 24.6 at wisley in surrey. but, as i indicated earlier, another fine day on the way. now, the satellite pictures showed on easter sunday there was some cloud north—west scotland, the western side of northern ireland. that has actually pulled away, and we are starting today dry and clear across the bulk of the uk. a little chillier than this in some rural parts of central and eastern england, maybe a little misty in one or two spots, but it's a sunnier day in north—west scotland, the northern and western isles, in the western side of northern ireland, where you've had a few of cloud. but there will be high cloud spilling northwards through much of england and wales, the sun will be hazy, there will be more cloud around in recent days here. there may be a late shower somewhere in south—west england and south wales, especially on the hills, very isolated. temperatures — high teens, low 20s, feeling every bit as warm, maybe mid—20s in the warm spots, it could be the warmest

easter monday on record so we will keep you updated on that. it will be breezier, mind you. 0n through monday night into tuesday, well, a lot of high cloud around, still the chance for a few showers, channel islands, south—west england, south wales and temperatures where they have been chilly in recent nights will be higher. big picture for tuesday, drifting up from the south and on with the high cloud a bit of saharan dust as well, so cameras at the ready, there could be some fiery looking sunrises and sunsets to be watched on tuesday, and maybe for a few days beyond as well. a lot of fine weather again on tuesday. it is hazy sunshine. still fairly breezy out there. and still, the further west you are, you could pick up one or two showers as the day goes on. it's still very warm, though temperatures may have come down a degree or so on where they have been, and that is a process that accelerates from mid—week. losing the warmth, low pressure setting up as it becomes unsettled and the cool air moves in, particularly at the end of the week and into next weekend. so, gradually turning cooler as the week goes on. you can see this process under way here. we are changing from sunshine to increasing chances of wet weather, not necessarily a bad thing on the gardens and the fields.

so, the cooling trend, temperatures may be below average by next weekend, some showers, even some thunderstorms, spreading northwards. bye— bye. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. i'm reged ahmad. our top stories: grief and shock across sri lanka — as a wave of bomb attacks on churches and hotels leaves more than 200 dead. translation: i heard the explosion and then the roof fell on us. we took the children and ran out from the rear door but when i came to the hospital i saw my brother—in—law and son on the ground. a government minister tells the bbc police were briefed about the threat ten days ago but the prime minister wasn't told. the million—dollar question was, this was sent on the 11th of april and no proper government official actually had their hands on it.