A TELEVISED Easter-morning sung eucharist from Ripon Cathedral, with Widor’s Mass for Two Choirs, is among the BBC’s programming for Holy Week and Easter, announced on Tuesday, as is the Pope’s annual address Urbi et Orbi and Harry Clark Goes to Rome.
They will be part of the BBC’s sixth annual “Faith and Hope” season, which, it said in a statement, would “bring together content to celebrate Easter and many of the other religious festivals taking place at this time of year”. The BBC was, it said, “passionate about not just representing religion, faith and world beliefs but in recognising the vital role they play in connecting communities, and in providing solace and support at our most difficult times”.
Programmes to mark Holy Week and Easter include, on Radio 2, Easter Reflections, hosted by Canon Kate Bottley on Good Friday, before she presents Good Morning Sunday with Jason Mohammad, on Easter Day.
Also on Good Friday, Radio Scotland will broadcast Trials and Transformations, in which the Revd Alison Jack and Dr Linden Bicket from New College, Edinburgh, “find meaning in the [Good Friday] story — how and why it was written and how its impact has endured over two millennia”; and Confronting Chaos, which asks whether “the meaning of Good Friday [can] offer ways to peace and grace in an uncertain age”.
A retired Church of Scotland minister, the Revd Richard Frazer, is to present Prayer for the Day for Holy Week on Radio 2. In Easter Week, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, will host.
On Palm Sunday, Radio 3 will broadcast a programme of music by Handel and Bach which recreates Good Friday 1747 in Leipzig, when J. S. Bach performed Handel arias during a performance of the St Mark Passion, the only known instance of artistic interaction between the composers. This will come from Barcelona, with the Barcelona Consort. It will be followed by an Easter concert from Copenhagen, with the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, including works by Judith Bingham and S. S. Wesley; a celebration of Bulgarian church music by the St Alexander Nevsky Patriarchal Cathedral Choir in Sofia; and the world première of Angels Unawares, by Sir James MacMillan, recorded in the Sistine Chapel.
In Illuminated: Harrier Angels, on Radio 4, the nature writer Robert Macfarlane will study the pre-Reformation roof carvings of angels in St Wendreda’s, March, in Cambridgeshire. John Betjeman said that it was “worth cycling forty miles in a head wind” to visit St Wendreda’s, because of the 120 angels in the roof. Their wings were inspired by hen and marsh harriers, once common locally and now making a comeback.
On Maundy Thursday, Tenebrae and the Britten Sinfonia will be heard in Sir James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words from the Cross, in a recording made at St Martin-in-the-Fields on the eve of Palm Sunday.
On Good Friday, Linton Stephens will be hosting Classical Live on Radio 3, featuring a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion.
The Revd Professor Luke Bretherton’s weekly Radio 4 Lent Talks (Radio, 27 February) will conclude on Palm Sunday with “Power and Community”. The author Rhidian Boork will broadcast a Good Friday Meditation — Notes on an Execution at 3 p.m. on Radio 4 on Good Friday.
On Easter Day, Radio 4’s Sunday Worship will be broadcast live from Canterbury Cathedral, with a sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury and a Mass specially composed, Matthew King’s Canterbury Missa brevis.
Songs of Praise on Easter Day features Pam Rhodes and the community of Redruth Baptist Church in Cornwall, raising the 30-ft Carn Brea Cross, and there will be a special performance from the Mevagissey Choir.
Radio Ulster and Radio Foyle will broadcast an Easter Day service live from St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast.
The Welsh siblings Rob and Kate Westall are to host Easter Meditation on Radio Wales, featuring scripture, songs, and spoken word, recorded live at the BBC in Cardiff.
On BBC2 and iPlayer, a new series of Pilgrimage: The road to Holy Island follows seven well-known personalities of different faiths and beliefs across north-east England to explore the lives of early Celtic Christian saints.
In Harry Clark Goes to Rome, Mr Clark, a former Traitors contestant (Features, 10 October 2025), will be pursuing his quest to meet the Pope. Another documentary will follow the Scottish singer and broadcaster Michelle McManus on a trip that she made to sing to the Pope.
Thought for the Day, on Radio 4, will include reflections over Easter from the Revd Lucy Winkett, Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly; the director of Theos, Chine McDonald; Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg, the Senior Rabbi of Masorti Judaism, on Passover; and Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Religion and Society at King’s College, London, on Eid.
On Good Friday, the World Service will broadcast Heart and Soul: Grief, God and the chatbot, about Megan Garcia, who turned to prayer and devotion to the Virgin Mary, as a fellow mourning mother, after her son’s death. Ms Garcia’s son had formed a close relationship with an online chatbot, whom he believed to be human, and she believes that this contributed to his death.
At a Religion and Ethics Showcase in February, the BBC highlighted a selection of programming from the past year, and a discussion panel included the BBC Head of Religion and Ethics for TV, Daisy Scalchi; the Head of Religion and Ethics for Radio, Tim Pemberton; Caroline Matthews, from CTVC, a charity that produces religious, ethical, and moral content; and a former Love Island and Strictly star, Tasha Ghouri, who took part in the latest series of Pilgrimage.
The media landscape was changing rapidly, Ms Scalchi said, and the BBC must serve the viewers. “We don’t always get it right,” she said, but the programming provided “amazing opportunities to bring different faiths together”.
Mr Pemberton said that there were a “good number of people who are religious both formally and informally, as well as people who are ‘spiritual’”. It was important, he said, also to “give space to people who are not religious, to know their life view”.
Ms Ghouri, who described participating in Pilgrimage as “the opportunity of a lifetime”, said that she “went in an atheist, and came out agnostic”.
Ms Matthews said that Pilgrimage featured honest conversations that people might not otherwise have. “Talking about religion can be spiky,” she said. For those taking part in the programme, it was not about conflict, or “catching people out”, but rather about “meaningful and respectful conversations.”
For the full “Faith and Hope” programming, visit: bbc.co.uk
