coming up, christians in iraq. ongoing violence forces hundreds of thousands to flee the country. and abraham, a physician and popular writer who sees his work as a mintry of healing. plus a poet's take on the song and how they address every human emotion from despair to jubilation. >> the songs are full of longing for god. you know. a longing to experience god more intimately.

major funding for "religion & ethics newsweekly is provided by the lilly endow do youment and indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founder's interest in religion. community develop. and education. additional funding by mutual of america, designing customized individual and group retirement providence. that's why we're your retirement company. also by the henry loos foundation and the corporation for public broadcasting. welcome. i'm kim lawton sitting in for bob abernathy. thank you for joining us. pope benedict xvi set off a new global conversation this week about the use of condoms to help stop the spread of hiv-aids. in a new book the pope said in certain situations using a condom to prevent the transmission of a deadly disease could be a step towards more's responsibility.

he cited the example of a prostitute. the catholic church has longo posed condoms as a means of birth control, but there has been strong internal debate about their use in aids prevention. in 2009, benedict said he believes condoms can increase the problem of hiv-aids. again in this book, benedict said condoms aren't a real solution to the aids crisis. the vatican said benedict's comments are not a complaining in church teaching on immoral sexual behavior but there has been intense speculation about exactly what the pope meant and how it might affect the fight against aids. the new book is called "light of the world" based on a series of benedictal interviews and covers a host of comments to theology and relations with muslims, protestantss and jews. benedict says he likes to relax with members of his prate household whom he calls hi papal family and watch old italian

movies. in this country, an interfaith coalition sga coalition gathered on capitol hill to call the government's attention to the needs of the poor. at a meeting including administration and congressional staff, faith leaders urged new efforts to reduce poverty by half over the next ten years. >> there are now more people in this nation poor than at any time in the 51 years for which such statistics have been kept. that is simply unconscionable. it is unacceptable to people of faith and we freed to say stow and we need to say so now. >> the coalition also calls for immediate passage of a child nutrition reauthorization act. the holiday shopping season kicks off this week, but many americans say they'll be buying fewer gifts this year. according to a new survey from the christian group world vision, seven in ten americans say they will cut back on holiday spending because of the current economy.

about half say they're more likely to give a charitable gift as a present. religious leaders have called for special prayers this weekend for haiti, with the cholera epidemic continuing to spiral. evangelist franklin graham headed a faith-based group samaritan's purse said the number of cholera deaths has been vastly underreported urging for airlifts of supplies and xpap pa dieting the customs process. in the past weeks a series of attacks against christians in iraq. most tragic a siege against a catholic church in baghdad where at least 58 people were killed. many iraqi christians say the violence actually began after the u.s. invasion in 2003, when extremists turned against them forcing hundreds of thousands to flee. kate sealy has our report on the exodus of christians from iraq. >> reporter: in a church in this iraqi village, a priest prepares

for a communal baptism. ♪ with a slash of water, he welcomes these infants into the christian faith. it's a challenging time for iraq's christians, since the 2003 american invasion, the christian community has been threatened and persecuted. everyone is a target. including this father. his church in the city of mosul has been bombed three times. he himself was kidnapped and held for nine days, but the real horror took place last february when his parents responded to a knock at their mosul home. >> translator: my father opened the door and saw three armed people. they entered the house and my brother tried to resist them, bu he had no weapons. we don't keep weapons at home. >> reporter: the intruders asked for an identity card to confirm that the family was christian. they then shot and killed the priest's father and two brothers. father madden says the killings make no sense to him.

>> translator: are they political or sectarian? is this part of a plan to get rid of the christians? there is always a question mark. nobody claims the assassination. >> reporter: iraq's christians are one of the world's oldest christian communities. most belong to the catholic church. others are asyrian affiliated with the church of east or syrian orthodox. while they all speak arabic, their language is that of christ. at the time of saddam hussein's overthrow there were estimated to be up to 1 million christians in iraq. today their numbers demin ared by more than one-third as christians have fled a wave of violence unleashed by the u.s. invasion. these women are widows. their husbands, a father and son, killed in 2008. the men were shot with two weeks of each other in mosul by unidentified gunmen. the widows blame the violence on

growing muslim extreme and intolerance which they say didn't exist before the u.s. invasion. >> translator: during the muslim holy month of ramadan we sent food and well-wishes to the muslims. muslims visited christians. christians visited muslims. we all got along. but after the collapse of saddam, everything changed. >> translator: in the past, they say, iraq's christians were an accepted and integral part of iraqi society. contribution was significant as the syrian archbishop of mosul says. >> translator: in the 1950s, dozens of doctors in mosul were all christian. christians opened the first schools, the first publishing house, the first theater, the first hospital. >> reporter: most importantly yet, christians were secure and protected under saddam hussein's government, but the arrival of american troops put the community in a difficult

position, he adds. >> translator: the christians suffered from the advent of the americans because our muslim brother ace sumd because they were christians and we were christians we must be allies. so we had to defend ourselves against that. >> reporter: christian was not a part of the iraqi opposition to saddam, unlike most kurds and shia muslims. once overthrown, many christians took jobs with the american army, as law and order dissolved in the new iraq, extremists filled the void. they accused christians of being traders attacking their churches an businesses, and demanded that they convert to islam. without a ma lish militia to protect them, iraq's christian community started to flee. some came here to this largely christian village where security is tight. it is located in a plain in the northern part of iraq. it's largely been spared of

violence le the big cities like mosul and baghdad. since 2005, christians have fled here. the compound houses hundreds of refugees. like the bashir whose say they're just scraping by. >> translator: the government has never given us anything, but there are a few humanitarian organizations which sometimes give us food, clothes and the money. >> reporter: but the vast majority of christian refugees have fled iraq altogether, and are living in neighboring countries, like jordan and syria. hristian leaders here are now debating how to keep the remaining members of their community from leaving. some hope a new election law giving christian as minimum of five seats in iraq's parliament will increase their influence. other leaders have been talking about establishing a so-called safe zone for christians in the plains, but luis, a local council member says it's a bad idea.

>> translator: a zone would be a risky solution for christians because many other group oes pose it. and if the christians bing this issue up against, there will be more threats and killings and migrations. >> reporter: instead, he says he would welcome u.s. and foreign aid to create jobs here as well as to establish local plit unol units manned by christians. he said better local security is critical especially given a dispute in the plains again arabs kurds, a separate ethnic group. he says the kurds who run a region to the north lay claim to par of nineveh, even though it's under the jurisdiction of iraq's central government. >> translator: we live an a disputed area. other brother, kurds to the north, to the south, brothers the arabs. in nineveh, wes are stuck in the

middle, between a rock and hard place. >> reporter: this lawyer says given all the pressures his community faces, christians see no future for themselves in iraq. >> every at 3:00 a.m., christian single men want to leave the country if they get the chance. yes. in general. if now, if not, for example, if the united states administration declares that we are ready to give visa, u.s. visa to go to united states for christians in iraq, i think -- i think at least 80% of what we have left of our population would leave the country to the united states. >> reporter: and what will that mean for the christian community? >> we are excluded. we are being killed every day. >> reporter: what will that mean for the number of christians in iraq? will there be any christians left? >> no, of course. the population is rapidly decreasing. >> reporter: he adds that the disappearance of iraq's

christians would not be unprecedented. he points to neighboring turkey where a once flourishing christian community is now virtually non-existent. he says christians in places like egypt and the palestine are also leaving due to political pressures. >> if this, this superpower will stay ignoring what happened in the middle east i think maybe in the next 50or 70 years, the middle east will be empty from christianity. >> reporter: for iraq's christian community, which traces its roots as far back as ang sent mesopotamia, it's a bitter prospect. the only real guarantee for its safetisy a secure and democratic iraq, for "religion & ethics newsweekly, i'm kate sealy in iraq. we have a profile now of abraham bergeez a doctor, popular writer tcher and advocator of the idea that the practice of medicine is a

calling. speaking to him -- >> reporter: abraham has all the credentials and degrees befitting a professor at stanford medical school but is best known and acclaimed for his writing. two best selling memoirs that opened a different kind of medical vocation. >> my desire to be a physician has a lot to do with that sense of medicine as a ministry of healing. not just a science. not just a science and art but also a calling. also a ministry. >> reporter: his goal is to have today's medical students aspire similarly to a calling as much as a career in medicine. to awaken a more bake curiosity as they sharpen their clinical acumen. these third year medical students were studying abnormalityies. >> have you heard that term? an early sign of heart failure. who's got good hand veins that i

can borough? >> reporter: he offered a simple complains by blood vessels should not normally be visible above the level of the heart. >> the level is about here. okay? so watch what happens as i raise her hand. you see the veins? nice three dimension. right? see how they're flapping out? they are gone. >> reporter: the bottom line, the foreign x-ray, a doctor may spot tell it tale signs of disease. >> you see their neck vains and they're n veins -- >> reporter: students and practitioners of medicine in the west rely on technology in a system that stretches cognitive knowledge and machines over the skill that comes from touch and feel. >> i'm the first to admit that the resolution of a hand feeling the belly doesn't compare with the resolution of a cat scan scanning the belly, but only my hand can say that it hurts at

this spot and not at this spot. only my hand can say that. only my hand can say that this mass, palpable, aneurysm, painful. therefore maybe a leaking aneurysm. >> reporter: it's a theme he sounded repeatedly over are the years writing in magazines including the "new yorker "and "atlantic" and now a best-seller called "cutting the stone." it fulfill as long-held desire to write fiction as he told his book club in menlo park. >> fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives. >> reporter: the setting for the novel is far from silicon valley. a mission hospital in ethiopia. it is a textured 650-page narrative set amid that country's turmoil in the '60s and '70s. its stories ever medicine, doctors and future doctors at the hospital all illustrate what

the author calls the samaritan role of the healer. he went from med school in india to boston, tennessee, text, then stanford. he was born and raised in ethiopia to parents originally from india and from its orthodox traditions. faith w a big part of life for this and other expatriate communities in the ababa of his youth, which may unwittingly shaped some of the characters. >> what really inspire you to write the book, wanted to write a book to get people perhaps interested in medicine. but there was so much in the book about faith and different types of faith. how do you come to have so much of this, of another theme in your book? >> you know, to be honest answer, i don't really know. it all evolved that way, and i think when you're in medicine, you agonize over matters of the faith. >> reporter: the confluence of faith and medicine an the mission hospital itself attracted duke university divinity school dean gregory jones to read the book.

it was a timely find, just before a recent trip to discuss his church's own mission work. >> it becomes a shaping institution that play as really significant role in developing, in any developing country, ap one that we need to pay a lot more attention to. my trip to london was actually to deal with issues around southern sudan. and so i was struck by the significant role of this hospital, that it was playing in the novel about ethiopia. >> reporter: even though its setting seems distant, jones says the novel's context is very relevant to many students he sees at duke. >> i think a lot of christians go into nursing or medicine, where other health-related vocations out of a deep deeply formed and felt vocation. sometimes the practice of health care in the united states particularly often pushes those apart. and i think the novel portrays that in a really beautiful way. >> i joke, but only half joke

that if you show up in an american hospital missing a finger, no one will believe you until they get a cat scan, mri and orthopedic report. >> reporter: adding costs to the health care system and comes at the expense of one of our most important rituals. a visit with one's doctor. >> transformation. we marry with great ceremony to signal a transformation. we are baptized in a ritual to signal a transformation. the ritual of one individual cong to another and confessing to them things they wouldn't tell their spouse, their preacher, their rabbi, and then even more incredibly, this roving and allowing touch, different than any other context would be assault bp you know, tell me that that's not a ritual of great significance? if you shortchange the ritual by not being attentive or inputting while the patient is talking to you you basically are destroying the opportunity for the transformation. and what is a transition?

the sealing of the patient/physician bond. >> reporter: einecironically, research is responding, the virtue of the samaritan healer. >> can you have a powerful affect on patients or a powerful negative affect on patients, based on context, based on your tone of voice. they are actually associated with significant chemical changes in the brain. the parkinson's patient with a placebo, now able to show that the words of comfort trigger biological reactions, which are the very things that you want, and you you can use drugs to get there, you can use words of comfort to get there, which will make your drugs so much more effective. it's an incredible insight, a couple of decades now of practicing medicine, it's lovely to come full circle to where i started but with the scientists to back it up. >> reporter: for "religion & ethics newsweekly, this is fred

desan lazero. over the centuries people have had different often different reactions to reading the psalms. boston poet and writer pamela greenberg who's jewish, says at a dark point in her life she found so much comfort in the psalms she wanted to translate them from the original hebrew into poetic language for people of all faith. her book is called "the complete psalms." our story is illustrated with illuminated manuscripts by artist deborah band i. >> began the translation at a very dark time in my life. i came -- i came to religion as an adult really as an act of desperation. you know? i felt i needed to believe in something, and i struggled with depression. i had an intuition that in the psalms i would find something of the relationship to god that i was looking for. the psalms are full of longing

for god. you know. a longing to experience god more intimately. ♪ >> i think mostly for christians the psalms exactly what they do for jews, which is the western person of faith standing up in relation to god in a haven't honest and genuine way and i think in that way they speak to all of us. the great thing about the psalms is they address, really, the whole spectrum of human emotions. from intense despair and feeling of abandonment by god, feelings of betrayal by humankind. fear of mortality. to great joy and jubilance, and when i walk through the valley overshadowed by death i will fear no harm, for you are with

me. in translated psalm 23, i was very aware that it is a psalm that people are most familiar with, and so i wrestled with it. it seems to me to be a psalm that addressed the fear of mortality, and it's about death, but it's really about -- it's where for the people who are living and about the kind of spiritual death that we experience in our lives, just distance from god, but the psalms are very important to people who are suffering, because illness can leave us feeling very distant and cut off from god. and for people to feel that there's a way to talk to god, even from those periods of intense, almost unbearable torment, was very transformat e

transformative. to my mind, anger at god is a part of religious life. in psalm 39, for instance, the psalmist is saying, i am getting ready to walk away from you. my interaction with you brings only pain and sorrow. you know. answer me before i leave. and -- to me that's religious speech. i did wrestle with -- i would say particularly with the concept of the enemy in the psalms. psalm 109, verse 8, which is a psalm which is destruction upon the enemy and in vivid terms, and that kind of thing terrifies me. you do find with the psalms, wishes for revenge, upon the enemy, in my understanding, those expressions are really

meant to different fuefuse that. replacing that to the hds of god rather han than in human ha. the psalms are very much concerned with justice at the same time looking around the world and seeing the injustice of the world, and crying out to god saying you know, god, you who created the heavens and earth, why can't you create justice on earth? the psalms that praise god are also important, because they situate joy with the context of a relationship with god, which makes joy more than simply moments of happiness with a person's life, but it sort of gives joy of a more eternal context. the ending of the book of psalms is a crescendo of praise. you know, the very last psalm, psalm 150. praise god with cymbals, praise

god with cymbals that come crashes down. let everything that breathes praise god. shine forth your praises on god. >> finally, on our calendar, the season of advent begins on sunday for western christians and some branches of eastern orthodoxy. it's a time of spiritual preparation for chris mission and for many christians also the beginning of the new church here. and hanukkah begins this week. the eight-day festival marks the time when jews recaptured the temple in jerusalem in 2nd century b.c. according to tradition they lit lamps in the temple with only a one-day supply of oil, but the candles burned for eight days. that's our program for now. i'm kim lawton. there's much more on our website, including more of our interviews with abraham and pamela. you can comment on all of our stories and share them. audio and video podcast, also

available. follow us on twitter and facebook where i have a fan page now, too. you can also watch us on smartphones and iphones. to find out more join us as pbs.org. as we leave you, marachi music from mexico. the patron of citizens. ♪ plager funding for "religion & ethics newsweekly is provided by the lilly endowment, an indianapolis based family founded foundation dedicated to its founders and christian religion. community develop and education. additional funding by mutual of america. designing customized individual and group retirement products. that's why we're your retirement company. also by the henry loos

foundation, and the corporation for public broadcasting.