Faith on the fly: The airport chaplains

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

You can spend hours in an airport and never learn anything about the people around you. But follow the chaplains of London Heathrow, and you might start to see things - and people - differently. Headed up by Reverend Ruth Bottoms, a team of 20 multi-faith chaplains offer sanctuary and support to passengers and staff in the unpredictable environment of a mega airport. Counselling nervous fliers, responding to crises, leading daily masses in Heathrow’s own chapel - these chaplains respond to whatever comes their way.

Jude Shapiro spends a week with the chaplains and those they encounter to see what happens when faith, flight and the stresses of Europe’s busiest airport combine.

With thanks to the Heathrow Multi-Faith Chaplaincy and Heathrow Airport.

Presenter/producer: Jude Shapiro Executive producer: Jack Howson Sound engineer: Arlie Adlington A Peanut and Crumb production for BBC World Service

Transcript

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0:00.0	You can spend hours.
0:05.4	You can spend hours in an airport
0:10.6	and never learn anything about the people around you.
0:14.5	Who they are?
0:16.2	Why they're travelling?
0:17.6	How they're feeling.
0:19.8	People fly for all sorts of reasons and flying generates all sorts of emotions for different
0:27.3	people. We see everything at the airport in one way or another.
0:31.7	Leading me through the many lives at Heathrow in London, England is Reverend Ruth Bottoms.
0:37.0	We might go to some of the places where we know people might be facing something in particular,
0:42.4	so the family area where their children are playing, in front of departure boards
0:46.3	where people are waiting and trying to work out which gate they should be at and things.
0:50.5	Ruth is the head of Heathrow's multi-faith chaplaincy,
0:53.9	a pastoral service that attends to the emotional and spiritual needs of flyers and staff.
0:59.2	At Heathrow, we meet people.
1:02.1	There is no assurance of meeting them ever again.
1:05.2	It's like the philosophers we say,
1:07.5	you cannot enter a flowing river twice.
1:11.5	All year round, her team of 20 chaplains spend hours circulating through he throws five terminals,
1:17.7	responding to whatever the airport throws their way.
1:20.7	Sometimes I just sit and talk to somebody who's perhaps frightened,
1:24.8	and we talk about faith.
	...

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