a medical missionary in ethiopia treating fistula, a humiliing condition that affects an estimated 2 million women around the world. also, christian author eugene peterson on the need for pastors to really know their people. and jerusalem. author james carroll calls it a source of both conflict and unity. major funding for "religion and ethics newsweekly" is provided by the lilly endowment, an indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders' interest in religion, community development, and education. additional funding by mutual of america, designing customized

individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting. welcome, i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us. president obama made a major push this week for reform of the nation's immigration laws. on thursday, he addressed the national hispanic prayer breakfast in washington. the president called comprehensive reform a moral imperative and urged pastors to mobilize their church members around the issue. >> at critical junctures throughout our history, it's often been men and women of faith who've helped to move this country forward. it was in our episcopal churches of boston that our earliest patriots planned our revolution. it was in the baptist churches of montgomery and selma that t civil rights movement was born.

and it's in the catholic and evangelical and mainline churches of our southwest and across our entire continent that a new movement for immigration reform is taking shape today. >> earlier in the week, the president delivered a speech on immigration in el paso, texas, where he emphasized his administration's efforts to secure the border. he asked republicans to help him pass new legislation that includes a path to citizenship. the secretary general of the united nations ban ki moon called this week for an immediate and verifiable cease-fire in libya. his comments came as nato forces intensified airstrikes on libya's capitol, tripoli. the u.n. has also demanded better access for humanitarian workers. concerns for those fleeing libya by boat have intensified after several recent shipwrecks off the coast.

in one incident, nearly all of the 600 refugees onboard are belied to have drowned. some christian leaders and religious freedom advocates are criticizing the egyptian government for not protecting the country's coptic christians. more than a dozen people were killed and hundreds were wounded in a recent outbreak of violence between muslims and copts in cairo. two churches were burned down during the fighting. the violence began after reports that a christian woman who converted to islam was being held against her will in one of the churches. faith-based relief organizations have rushed to aid victims of the massive flooding as the mississippi river reaches near record levels. workers are helping relocate evacuees and churches are providing food and shelter. clean-up efforts are also under way in areas where the water has receded, leaving severe damage to homes and communities.

more than 75 catholic scholars have written to house speaker john boehner, urging the congressman, a catholic, to re-examine church doctrine about caring for the poor. they say some legislation boehner supports is at odds with catholic teaching. they cited the proposed republican budget for 2012, saying it would disproportionately affect poor women and children. the letter was sent in advance of boehner's commencement address at catholic university in washington this weekend. the presbyterian church usa will now allow openly gay men and women to serve as clergy. last july, church leaders voted to lift the ban on ordaining gays and lesbians. but before that change could go into effect, it had to be approved by a majority of the presbyteries, or local church assemblies. that approval came earlier this week.

three previous attempts to change the policy had been rejected by the presbyteries. the presbyterian church usa will be the fourth mainline protestant denomination to allow the ordination of openly gay clergy. we ha atoryodaybout a terrible condition affecting perhaps 2 million people in the world's poorest countries. it is fistula -- painful, degrading, dangerous and also treatable. fred de sam lazaro found a woman in ethiopia, a medical missionary from australia, who has spent most of her life helping fistula's suffering victims. >> the patients are often teenagers or barely in their 20s, yet several of them hobble in on walkers to physical therapy. these women suffer from fistulas, ruptures in vaginal, sometime even rectal tissue -- a humiliating, even crippling consequence in most cases

because of obstructed childbirth. >> they're leaking urine, and some of them are leaking bowel contents as well. >> dr. catherine hamlin and her late husband, reginald, came to ethiopia in the 1960s as christian missionaries and founded the hamlin fistula hospital a few years later. a memorial to her husband invokes the gospel of matthew. >> "whatever you did for one of the least of these, my brothers, you did for me." in the bible, it says "my brothers," isn't it? we say brothers and sisters. >> the least of the patients the young obstetricians saw were those with fistula. amid a lot of suffering, dr. hamlin says the fistula patients were especially desperate. >> she's smelling. she's poor. she's got nothing, and she's an outcast from her whole society, from everything that makes her happy. they lie in bed thinking "if i keep really still, the urine will dry up." they curl up in bed. they become stiff. their knees become contracted, their hips become contracted.

they get nerve damage to their feet. the sciatic nerve is pressed on by the long labor, and they've got paralysis of the feet. they can't bring the foot up. >> fistas were common across the world until the early 20th century, when prenatal care and modern systems of delivering health care, like caesarian sections, became available. today, fistulas are almost unheard of in richer countries, but 2 million women endure them in the developing world. >> for me as an ethiopian, the fact that fistula is happening in the 21st century is not something that we are proud of. >> dr. yetnayet asfaw works with a nongovernment aid group called engender health. she says the big issue is access to care in the vast, impoverished rural areas of this land of 82 million people, plus myriad cultural practices. >> 84% live in the rural

population, so the majority are rural women, and for rural women, the issues are many. one, women don't have access to education. there are also several cultural issues, such as harmful traditional practices. female genital mutilation is one. early marriage is another. >> complications from the practice of cutting external female genitalia and other trauma, like rape, are thought to cause about 20% of fistulas. but the vast majority are a complication of obstructed labor, which results both in still birth and permanent injury to the young mother. >> the pelvis of the woman is too small for the baby to come through, or the baby's in a bad position inside the woman. so my husband used to say it's either the passage or the passenger. the passage is the pelvis that it's got to negotiate to get out, and the passenger is the baby, which if it's not lying in

the right position can cause the obstruction. >> vaginal and rectal fistulas can be repaired surgically, and dr. hamlin, who is 87, still performs manyf thprocedures, like this woman's case. we were asked not to use patient names. >> three days of labor, and then she had a stillborn baby, and then she was left with a vaginal fistula in her bladder. and it was quite -- it was a reasonably difficult one. >> what's the period of convalescence? >> i think in about 10 or 12 days. >> she's better off than most women here. many have lived with their injuries for years, too late to be repaired even with surgery. hospital services are free, but transportation is often unaffordable -- if they can get a ride. so how far away has this lady traveled to be here? >> it's about a four-hour drive. >> four-hour drive, which for

her would mean a bus ride, maybe? >> she would come in a bus, yes. >> which sometimes is difficult for them, if they're -- >> yes, it is difficult, and sometimes the passengers say, "this woman's smelling. put her off. she's got some disease," and they'll be thrown off the bus. >> to offer better access to its services, the hamlin hospital created five satellite facilities like this one in the rural countryside. they are funded entirely by donations from governments and private, often church-based donors. still, only a third of the 10,000 ethiopian women who develop fistulas every year receive any care for them. that's why experts say it's important to shift the focus from repairing fistulas to preventing them. ethiopia's minister of health, dr. tedros ghebreyesus, says a holistic approach is needed. >> we need to focus more on community-based interventions and on preventing the fistulas.

the most important issues, it's the education part, which will be very important, and also law enforcement, like age of marriage is very important. girls' education is very important, and we're working on that. >> his ministry has won praise from public health experts for building a network of rural health centers in recent years, with a major focus on maternal and child health. but there's still a huge shortage of skilled people to staff them. >> anterior, posterior -- >> a few years ago, the hamlin hospital began a four-year midwifery program. these freshmen were studying plastic models of the female pelvis, learning how to detect abnormalities in the fetus position. so far, two dozen graduates have gone on to staff regional health centers in rural areas.

a small, promising start, says dr. hamlin. >> we just have to keep the next generation of doctors and nurses inspired to help these women until it's eradicated from the countryside, and it can be eradicated, and it will be eradicated. in england, obstetric fistulas no longer occurred after 1920, so it's not so very long ago that fistulas were occurring in england and in europe. >> but ethiopia, like so many developing countries, has a long way to go. most ethiopian women today still deliver their babies without the presence of a skilled birth attendant. >> for "religion and ethics newsweekly," this is fred de sam lazaro in addis ababa, ethiopia. we have a profile now of the writer and retired presbyterian minister, eugene peterson. his latest book is "the pastor,"

a memoir filled with peterson's concerns about how hard it is for pastors and everyone else to live christian lives in modern america. peterson is best known for one of his earlier books, "the message," his translation of the entire bible into everyday american english. "the message" has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. peterson lives now in northwestern montana near glacier national park. in late winter, it is both majestic and full of life. peterson grew up nearby, in kalispell in the flathead valley. his father was a butcher who built a summer place on flathead lake, which peterson and his wife, jan, expanded and improved. when we met there, i asked peterson about his theology, but he said he has little time for anything abstract. he listens for the holy, he said, in people and in the quiet

of the place he loves. >> how do you pay attention to the unheard, the unseen? in a cluttered, noisy, distracd society, it's very hard to do that. a lot of the language in the church -- well, not just the church, in religion itself, has to do with trying to figure out the truth of things. what's true? what's true? and i'm not very interested in what's true. i want to know if i can live it. i want to test it out. >> peterson was the founding pastor and for 30 years the minister of christ our king presbyterian church near baltimore, maryland. because he had been trained as a scholar, he started out giving ctures from the pulpit. >> and after a couple of years i realized, you know, this isn't working, and i began to change the way i talked, the way i preached, the way i taught, so i was inviting conversation.

and you enter into the soul, the spirit of somebody else by listening to them, not by telling them something. i get asked, "what do you miss most about being a pastor?" i think it's the intimacy, the incredible gift of intimacy. you go through dth with somebody, with their families, and there's an intimacy that comes through that is just incomparable. >> in his 30-some books, one of peterson's themes is that there is no way pastors can develop one-on-one relationships with their people if their churches have more than about 500 members. >> a pastor in personal relationship is not just trying to find ways to make people feel good, loved, whatever. thiss a ngdolife we are living. it has to do with salvation. it has to do with justice. it has to do with compassion.

now you can't do that wholesale. you just can't. >> so peterson deplores megachurches. he thinks they are too big for pastors and worshipers to have close relationships with each other. >> what's so bad about it is that they don't have to live responsibly. when you are part of a megachurch, you have no responsibility to anybody else. >> but, obviously, aren't megachurches what many people want? >> the minute the church and pastors start saying what do people want and then giving it to them, we betray our calling. we're called to have people follow jesus. we're called to have people learn to forgive their enemies. we're called to show people that there is a way of life which has meaning beyond their salary and beyond how good they look. >> not surprisingly, peterson also condemns the so-called

"prosperity gospel" -- preaching that if people follow jesus, god will give them tangible rewards. >> i think it's a lie. i think it's just a downright rotten lie. it's nowhere in the christian tradition, so how does this get going in our culture? it's greed is what it is. it's greed given a spiritual name. god will bless you. i want to ask the prosperity people, "do yopeople ever die? do the people in your church ever die? what do you do when they die? where's the prosperity in that?" i don't have much patience with them, to tell you the truth, because i think they're defrauding people. >> i also asked peterson what he thought of doing church online. >> oh, my, you know you can have virtual baptisms now? there are pastors who have virtual baptisms. you can -- he'll baptize your

baby in the bathtub. you do the baptizing, he'll say the words, and you have a virtual baptism. how do you like that? >> as peterson compares life on flathead lake in montana to life in the rest of the country, he does not like what he sees. >> american culture is probably the least christian culture we've ever had because it is so materialistic and it's so full of lies. the whole advertising world is just -- it's just intertwined with lies, appealing to the worst of the instincts we have. the problem is people have been treated as consumers for so long, they don't know any other way to live. the added note for peterson is what pastors can teach. >> introduce them to a living

christ, a christ who makes life livable in the terms in which you are living -- that everything in the gospel is liveable, not just true. >> although the mainline protestant churches have lost millions of members, peterson sees them as essential. >> i think the mainline churches are the ones who are kind of holding things together while all this faddy stuff goes on. >> i could not resist asking peterson how he and his wife, as christians, have dealt with the prosperity his books have brought them. >> we give it all away. our standard of living has not changed, not a bit. we just -- we know a lot of people we like to give it to. >> in retirement, peterson seems content with his writing and his

sense of place -- of being, in his words, "at home." >> what makes me sure of what i'm doing is that virtually everything that seems to me that i believed i've been able to live. >> much as peterson likes stories and language, he made it cle thafor him as a pasr what matters most is not the words he preaches but the way he lives. now a special appreciation of the city of jerusalem -- beloved and fought over for thousands of years. author and "boston globe" columnist james carroll, a former priest, has a new book out called "jerusalem, jerusalem," with stories that jews, christians and muslims -- all three -- may find surprising. we talked with carroll at the historic synagogue at 6th and i streets in washington. >> jerusalem in the ancient world was a cockpit of violence. it was the place where all the warring armies of the empires intersected.

beginning with that first experience of exile in babylon, jews came into a new awareness of who they were and who their god was by looking back at jerusalem, and they claim their identity by refusing to forget it. augustine was arguing for the survival of jews as jews in christendom who would witness to the truth of christian claims by their degradation, and that's en the source of tremendous anti-jewish and ultimately anti-semitic behavior, contempt, and one of the most powerful forms of the degradation was the jews are to be permanently in exile from jerusalem, from the jewish home. it's so important to emphasize that the islamic arrival in jerusalem was nonviolent and respectful of the jewish tradition, so that when the caliph beheld the temple mount, which to him was to be revered cause thatas t pla whe

god had stopped abraham from sacrificing his son, he's astounded to discover that the christians have been treating it as a garbage dump, and the caliph, umar, ordered the temple mount cleaned up, reverenced. he invited jews back into the city who had been exiled by the christians. those first generations of muslims were honoring the jewish holy place without any sense of conflict with it, and we know that that was lost. in the year 1096 when the pope calls for the crusade to take jerusalem back from the infidel who have been occupying it since the seventh century, it sears the european christian imagination with violence, holy war, god wills violence, and it centers the christian imagination on, guess what, jer. the return of the jewish people to jerusalem, to israel, in the

19th and 20th centuries especially, culminating in the establishment of the state of israel in 1948, is a reversal of this ancient fate that was generated by the romans and then theologized by the christians. and i would just add that we christians have been reckoning with this, and that's the meaning for us catholics of the tremendously important visit to jerusalem by pope john paul ii in the year 2000. he prayed at the western wall as a jew would pray, without invoking jesus, and he offered his act of repentance there -- a tremendously important reversal of theology, the example of the kind of reckoning with the past that has to keep happening, actually. christians, jews and muslims all have a sacred connection to it, each in a very different way. that sacred connection to this place, even though at the

present moment it's a source of contention, is actually a profound source of union. i don't see any hope for peace between israelis and palestinians until two things happen. one, palestinians have to somehow reckon with the authentic return of the jewish people to the jewish homeland. on the other side, i don't see much hope for peace until israelis reckon with their part in the dispossession of the palestinian people, and in particular i'm troubled by the settlements and the ongoing occupation. the holy one we all have in common is the one god, which makes us brothers and sisters, so the place itself is a source of peace, and so i love jeusal, inuding the mess of it -- the christian mess, certainly, but all of the messes of it. finally, there were many prayers this week for billy graham, now 92 years old. he was hospitalized on wednesday

with pneumonia. graham remained at the mission hospital in asheville, north carolina, through the end of the week, and doctors said his condition was improving. that's our program for now. i'm bob abernethy. there's much more on our website, where you can watch more of our interview with james carroll and read excerpts from his book about jerusalem and from eugene peterson's memoir about being a pastor. you can comment on all of our stories and share them. audio and video podcasts are also available. you can follow us on facebook and twitter, find us on youtube, and watch us anytime, anywhere on smartphones and iphones with our mobile web app. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, scenes from italy, where pope benedict xvi, visiting venice, gave photographers everything they could have wished for. he first put to sea in a sturdy launch.

then, he transferred to a well-staffed gondola, he seemed to enjoy it and even to be at peace. major funding for "religion and ethics newsweekly" is provided by the lilly endowment, an indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders' interest in religion, community development, and education. additional funding by mutual of america, designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. and the corporation for public broadcasting.