new national lockdowns have come into force in parts of europe — as countries struggle to contain a surge of coronavirus infections. it means christian worshippers celebrating easter will — for a second year — be doing so under vastly different circumstances. france and italy are among the countries entering lockdown. a spectacular parade has been taking place in cairo — to transfer the mummified remains of 22 ancient egyptian royals to a new museum in the south of the city. 18 kings and 4 queens were transported on custom—made vehicles designed to minimise vibration. now on bbc news, dateline london.

hello, i'm shaun ley. welcome to the programme which brings together uk commentators, bbc specialists and foreign correspondents who file their stories for audiences at home, dateline london. this weekend, as christians celebrate easter and renewal, we're devoting the programme to one theme — after the pandemic can we renew our world? and is reconciliation possible when people in much of it seem so angry? to try to answer that are catherine pepinster, the first woman to edit the tablet, the international catholic newspaper. michael goldberg, veteran foreign correspondent for us public radio. his podcast frdh is inspired by the ambition ofjournalism as the first rough draft of history. and in the studio, the bbc broadcaster and china specialist, vincent nee. welcome to all of you,

it is good to have you with us this easter weekend. pope francis, who delivers his easter message for a second yearfrom inside the basilica rather than to the thousands of catholics who gather most years in st peter's square, practised what he preaches when, last month, he made the first ever papal visit to iraq. he was seeking not only to reconcile christianity and islam but also to inspire muslims to heal the division within theirfaith. yet faith is weaponised in conflicts around the world, used, if you'll pardon the expression, to demonise minorities. china, this weekend marking qingming, the tomb sweeping festival, stands accused ofjustifying conversion and supression of uighers on the grounds of their faith, islam. it now permits catholics to worship. is that reconciliation or has the vatican been co—opted to beijing's cause? how credible is reconciliation in brazil or the united states, where politics is now so polarised, and, perhaps not coincidentally, so ineffectual?

in a global pandemic, which we're all in together, why are we so angry with each other, especially when it's manifestly not in our own best interest? catherine pepinster, let's start with the pope. this visit to iraq was on a personal level in terms of his own safety, quite a big risk to run, it is the first time a pope has been to iraq, even though it is one of the countries of one of the birthplaces of christianity. it had quite a message designed to resonate beyond that one country? yes, you are absolutely right. this was an historic occasion for the pope to go to iraq but he was committed to trying to get it organised and he wanted to take that message of reconciliation. reconciliation is a word that has come up time and time again throughout the eight years francis has been pope. i think if you look at his writings, when he mentions reconciliation, he always mentions dialogue. that reconciliation means

you have to talk to people. you have to find ways through your differences. he was also keen in that visit to show his solidarity with the christian minorities who have had such a terrible time in recent years. but alongside solidarity with one particular group, he is saying you have got to talk to the other side, as it were, as well, you have got to have that encounter. i think it is something we see such a lack of at the moment in our world. you mentioned some of the world in your introduction where this is such a problem. we have also seen in places in the past, such as in south africa and northern ireland, that reconciliation and dialogue can make a difference. michael, it might seem trite

to say, but plenty of people will be watching this programme who i suspect will be thinking it is all very well to say what the pope is trying to do, but religion, whether religious people themselves want it to be this way, probably not, but religion has been used as a justification for what is otherwise unjustifiable, in terms of violence, in terms of political and economical and its faith the problem, not the solution? faith is not the problem, it is exploitation by politics, politicians and rulers, that is a problem. it has been a problem for a very, very long time. we are still living, despite people's concerns we are ending the age of enlightenment. the age of enlightenment began as a response to 150 years of unimaginable barbarity and cruelty as christianity went through its great reformation in the west. the foundational texts

of the enlightenment, i will mention two, the theological and the letter concerning toleration byjohn locke are both written in a sense to say, for too long the clergy, whether it be catholic priests or ministers in the protestant faith have had the era of the prints and they have been using that access to form division and impose their will on the whole of society. and they called for toleration. you can have a public space where you can be catholic and you can be protestant. you can be a sunny, or a sheer, although they were not referring to the islamic world theft — it has come now in modern times to the islamic world

and we have been living less so today, but we have been living for several decades while the islamic world has a kind of civil war that has been going on. but it has been fomented by politicians and used by politicians to cement their own power. there is an element of hypocrisy in all of that. my own view is, faith is personal, faith is what you were brought up in and it should stay personal. but you have to be very careful when you bring it into the world of politics, because then it becomes a different game. there is, catherine, a kind of depressing repetitiveness about this isn't there, in the 16th and 17th century, it was catholics who were feared by some because they were said to have divided loyalties, how can they be loyal to our country when they still have this loyalty to the pope in rome who is a foreign prince. we have the same aboutjewish people, while there are rootless people, they cannot have any loyalty.

we have heard it about muslims, we have heard it in various forms that sound benign, the early 80s, could you be british if you are cheering on india cricket, for example. it is the benign end but it can slide very quickly into something more sinister and more negative. as part of the problem that faith itself encourages this, one thinks of the crime of apostasy, the idea that you can be of the same fate, but if you deviate in a particular way, you are somehow betraying that faith? michaeljust mentioned the politics is the problem on faith. i think it might possibly human nature that is actually the problem. these difficulties keep coming over and over again. i think one area where

we are seeing this insistence on loyalty is in china. see this time and time again, the chinese communist party seems to not be able to abide the idea that people could have a loyalty, devotion to a particular religious faith and also be chinese, be accepting of their government. and if there is one area of pope francis that is hugely controversial is his endeavours to form some kind of dialogue with the chinese, which doesn't seem to be getting christians in the country any further down the road to some kind of normal life. it seems to be an intractable problem and his attempts at reconciliation and dialogue with the chinese, i don't know if he is naive, but is not getting anybody very far. vincent, that is an interesting example, isn't it? what had been the persecution of christians, catholics

in modern day china and then this kind of insistence from the chinese leadership, as i understand it, right, you can chinese bishops, you can have practice, but we have to have approval about who these people are you are putting in charge, because he was setting them up as a rival authority? i agree with what michael said, religion itself might not be - a problem but when it is mixed with politics, external- geopolitics, it is a problem. from china's perspective, i when they look at the map where xinjiang lies, . it is bordered by eight countries, afghanistan and to russia. - we are talking about their divided loyalty concept and faith is sometimes one of the things political leader see as a potential threat?

yes, there was an element of internal security, - also an element of external geopolitics here. _ when it comes to faith - and politics, if they are mixed together, this is where the controversy lies. i notjust in china but also| in myanmar, in the plight of the rohingya muslims, - buddhist monks becoming very political, some high—profile ones reportedly have said l things like every- muslim is dangerous. this is where things get out of control. i you have religion. mixed with politics. that is an interesting example because we are at a point in myanmar, there is a kind of very, arguably quite poisonous link between ethnic identity and faith. if you are a nationalist loyal to myanmar as a concept, you are likely to be buddhist. 90% of the population is buddhist. any muslim is

potentially dangerous. we have seen an example of that in the treatment of the rohingya minority. is there any pushback, is there a sense of any people who are uncertain about the way this has gone? we have seen reporters . going into either myanmar or in neighbouring countries and reporting on the plightl of rohingya muslims. also pope francis last year also mentioned yazidis, i uighurs and rohingyas, - calling them persecuted people. so there is international. pushback, but we all know what is happening in myanmar today and there doesn't seem| to be the opportunity- to have a dialogue with what is happening in myanmar- and what is perceived outside. as you said, it is not dialogue, it is dispersal and execution for those who are protesting. michael, this goes back

to idea of the politics. if we are talking about reconciliation and we talk about politics, it is hard not to think of the united states and again, weirdly there is almost a sense that as the practice of religion has declined, or the organised practice of religion, some of that passion has gone from faith into politics and politics has become almost a form of religion in itself? let me just, before i come back to that, i want to pick up on something vincent was saying. this is again politics and religion, that neither pakistan nor turkey, muslim countries, has been particularly loud in criticising china for its treatment of its muslim minority. and that is politics at large. turkey, both leaders of both countries are very, very,

it would call themselves islamic politicians, i would think but they are not standing up for their muslim brothers. but coming back to america, some very, very opinion research came out this week, they have sampled all kinds of opinion which shows that despite the fact that americans profess religion, one of the most religious countries in the west, church attendance has gone down. they haven't explained why that should happen over the last four or five years, but my guess is so evangelical christians, and really they are political christians, have become so dominant in parts of the country that there are many people in the south in texas, in the west now, he would consider themselves

in religious terms, to be evangelical, but don't want to go to church on sunday and have a political agenda pulled down their throats, so they have stopped going to church. part of the problem in america and one of the reasons why people have such a hard time talking, it does seem to be going through... i think it is in a state of cold civil war, there is the religious element. there is a sense that, this is my faith, i am right. my political opinion is right. that is more thanjust an intellectual opinion, it is something they believe, that this is what the united states is, or was when it was founded and is no longer, and i will fight people to make it what it was at its founding. and that is tied in with this political christianity. it is a big problem. that is an interesting prospect catherine, when we talk about the idea of reconciliation. you were saying about

the importance of dialogue. dialogue only works if people are talking to each other and not passed each other. and there is this sense, in terms of the practice of politics, they don't have to be convinced by fax any more, it is an act of faith to believe in the ideology they believe in. how do you start to disentangle that, to be able to change people's mind that they fear that in changing their minds, they are losing their identity? i think one of the problems we have right now is the impact of social media. i think social media is upping the anti all the time. it is making people much more divided rather than bringing them together. what it does, people follow those they agree with except when they are unbelievably hostile to those they agree with.

what we see lacking in social media, and i think we see lacking so often in these conflicts we talking about here, there seems to be a complete lack of humility. there is an assumption that one side is right and the other side is completely wrong and can be completely dismissed. if you are going to have dialogue, you have got to have that humility to develop as well. we see an enormous lack of that in politics as well. that the conflicts often involving politics, whether religion is part of it or not, the situation is made even more difficult because of this lack of humility. i am not sure how you encourage people to develop that type of humanity, but when it is lacking, we just don't get the dialogue that is needed.

in a country like brazil, successful and powerful country. a country that many admire and other countries aspire to be like brazil, to go from where brazil was to where it is now, but it's politics has become increasingly polarised and distrustful, convince the other side is corrupt and you cannot engage with them. president bolsonaro now facing his former president, president de silva, who has become the focus of this, it is hard to understand how a country like this gets to that stage of reconciliation without something much worse first? completely, in a polarised world it is ordinary- people who bear the brunt. look at brazil when it comes to the covid health crisis - and a vaccine is not largely. rolled out yet in the country.

top leadership, president| bolsonaro has been a very reluctant to get people vaccinated. _ it is ordinary people suffering from political polarisation. i that is the problem, l the lack of leadership, whether it is in brazil. or in the united states. they certainly want to bring the country together, - but it will take him a long time, if not years, - to make it happen. he is building infrastructure, getting americans _ inoculated by the summer. but we are facing this - unprecedented scenario now. we don't know whether there will be an economic crisis - following this health crisis. we don't know how the - competition between the us and china will develop. this is a really divided - and divisive world where there is no apparent leader who can bring everybody together- from an international level. and from individual countries. i want to perhaps end on the pandemic but picking up

on what we were talking about earlier, catherine gave examples of where places had dialogue and reconciliation, she mentioned south africa and northern ireland, but you can't question whether there was truly reconciliation. one country that seems to be happening in a way that has surprised people is colombia. the big process has led to some former leaders of the farc rebel group being charged with war crimes. they are taking the reverse approach. is that a productive one, do you think? in the case of colombia, part of it, there are some countries where you can bolster these things through aid.

it is clear that is what happened in south africa and to a very considerable degree in northern ireland when there was a lot of inward investment from the united states to make sure that in this transition period, the people who have been fighting insurgency is against one another for decades in the case of colombia going back to the 19605, have an opportunity to talk and to deal with one another in a world where economic... economic gain is being more evenly spread. this perhaps can bring us back to america because inequality has been growing at such a pace _ people don't feel like they have that economic stake in the overall health of the society. whereas in colombia, that seems to be different. it should also be said that if you know enough about the wards that

were fought in colombia between the farc and other groups and various governments and you know what half a century feels like, you mightjust be inclined to say, we don't have to fight about this stuff, we really don't. so time also heals, to a certain degree. and that it's a message of hope and optimism, catherine. one element is this, and we have had it in different forms, people trying to apologise and account for what has been done. whether it is apologies for historic child sexual abuse, apologies for slavery in the atlantic slave trade, whether in the most recent example, it is a small institution in a part of the united kingdom saying, out of step with other institutions around the world, actually, we have got this thing, we have got this bronze

that was pillaged from nigeria and it is intolerable for us to keep it, we will give it back. small acts that might have a bigger resonance? yes, when we look at an issue such as we have this morning, conflict across the world, it is easy to be very pessimistic. but i think you have just mentioned small acts and if you look across society, and we have seen this particularly in the pandemic that there are countless small acts that do make a difference. i think the pandemic has exacerbated existing problems. michael was just mentioning inequality and we have seen how inequality in the uk has been exasperated by pandemic. but the pandemic has highlighted the capacity for humanity to do good as well. that is something perhaps at easter we can celebrate.

vincent, on that thought, we have had this call from a number of world leaders, including borisjohnson in the uk, angela merkel, president macron, in a sense acknowledging they are not adequate as individuals for the pandemic, but a future treaty for pandemics and say that we are all in this together, particularly over vaccine nationalism. has it been such a bad experience for the world that this might be the thing to galvanise us to do something together? this is a positive step and 25| countries have joined a cause to establish this treaty. the devil is in the detail. we are in a time of every| country believe they have the right to set the rules. it is ultimately about who sets the rules, i whether it is the us, - china, the eu orthe uk. it is a very positive step i

but it will take some time. especially contacts and negotiating. a multilateral treaty. we know how notorious it can be sometimes. i it is positive but it. will take some time. time is one thing we have on our hands for now. not least many people sitting at home. thank you for being with us. thank you to catherine, michael and vincent and for you watching us. i am remembering that sometimes you have to make compromises. what is it the prophet and prince said that after years of religion, the massacre of terrible acts in france when he said paris is worth a mass. that's it for dateline london for this week, we're back next week at the same time. goodbye.

good evening. it's been another gloriously sunny day for some. let's take a look at where we had the best of the sunshine. much of eastern scotland today saw temperatures climb up just shy of 17 degrees. totally different story, unfortunately, across the north norfolk coast. with quite a lot of cloud, temperatures struggled to peek above seven celsius. and you can see that clearly on the satellite picture. we did have an improvement through the midlands and down towards dorset, but it's this window of clear skies that's going to just drift a little bit further south overnight, and that's where we'll see the lowest temperatures. so starting to see a change into the far north of scotland, as cloud arrives here, and that's going to prevent the temperatures from falling much lower than 5—6 degrees. but maybe across the midlands and parts of wales, we could see temperatures around freezing, a touch of light frost not out of the question as well. so the high pressure hangs

on in across england and wales, but here's our change with this cold front gradually starting to arrive into scotland as we go through easter sunday. so it's a change of fortunes, really. where we've had the best of the sunshine just recently, we're going to see more cloud and rain arriving by the end of the afternoon. by contrast, over england and wales, dry and sunny. and for eastern england, where we've had that miserable, cold, cloudy storyjust recently, 15 degrees with some sunshine through the day. getting cold in scotland as we go into the afternoon, 8—10 degrees the high. colder still once this weather front continues to push its way steadily south. it will clear the uk by the start of easter monday, but it opens the door to this bitterly cold air arriving. and it will be quite windy with it as well. so not only is the wind direction coming from the north, it's going to be pretty gusty at times as well. sunny spells and scattered showers, but any of those showers, particularly across northern scotland, turning increasingly wintry —

hail, sleet and snow mixed in. factor in gusts of wind widely in excess of iamph. your home thermometer or inside your car, it may well say 6—8 degrees. perhaps it's going to feel well below that because temperatures are going to feel more like freezing in places. so a bitterly cold day for easter monday. as we look further ahead, this cooler feel is set to continue through much of the week. gardeners and growers, take note — as the winds fall light, frost quite widespread. take care.

hello and welcome to bbc news. welcome to bbc news, i'm lewis vaughanjones. there's turmoil in one of britain and america's key middle eastern allies, jordan, where the former crown prince says he's been put under house arrest. prince hamzah has accused jordan's leaders of incompetence and corruption. thejordanian military insists he's not been detained, but he was told to stop any action that could undermine the country's security and stability. the prince denied any wrongdoing in a video passed to the bbc. here's what he had to say.

i had a visit from the chief of the general staff