Passionists featured on BBC Radio: Keeping Faith at Easter

The work of Passionist monks in inner-city England will feature in a BBC local radio programme, Keeping Faith at Easter, to be broadcast across the UK twice over the Easter Bank Holiday Weekend.

The programme, which features stories of people whose faith is helping them make a difference in their communities, is being broadcast on all 40 BBC local radio stations on Good Friday, 15 April, at 6am and again at the same time on Easter Sunday. The programme will also be available to listen again on the BBC Sounds catch-up service.

Keeping Faith at Easter coincides with the publication of a new edition of Passion for the Inner City, a probing spiritual reflection on the first 12 years of Passionist monk Austin Smith’s life in inner-city Liverpool. The book tells how in 1971 two Passionist priests left their monastery to reinvent the contemplative life amid poverty and systemic racism in the poorest part of the city.

Austin Smith, the book’s author, died in 2011, aged 82. His monastic colleague Nicholas Postlethwaite is interviewed in the radio programme about their work in Liverpool in the 1970s and a second Passionist monk, Martin Newell, talks about his work today in the north London borough of Haringey.

You can find Keeping Faith at Easter here – whether tuning in live, or listening back after the fact.