Despite having sustained a serious head injury three years ago, Father Andrew Greeley is still a priest. “We know that he is blessed, and he’s blessing us, and it means a lot,” says Greeley’s niece, Eileen Durkin.

Clinics in India pay poor women a lot of money to be surrogate mothers, but "the contracts are usually written to protect the wealthy people who are commissioning the baby," says ethicist Arthur Caplan.

"There's a lot of pressure we put on ourselves as clergy because of what we're doing, and we don't want to let God down," says Rev. Lynda Ferguson, a Methodist pastor in rural North Carolina.

It is a painful rite of passage for girls in many African and Middle Eastern countries. But in Senegal there has been a remarkably successful campaign to change people's attitudes towards female circumcision in an effort to eliminate the practice altogether.

“We’re looking at long-term changes to make something sustainable here,” says World Vision’s Mary Kate MacIssac. Watch more interviews about the recovery effort and more video of three different church services on a recent Sunday morning in Port-au-Prince.

"You cannot understand caregiving unless you do it," says Arthur Kleinman. "Acts of caregiving come as close to what I think religion is as I could name."

Religious communities are part of a growing movement across America that is concerned with the ethics of how food is grown and how it gets to our tables.

"Every time you eat, you give expression to what you think the world ought to be," says Norman Wirzba, a professor of theology, ecology, and rural life at Duke Divinity School.

Doctors who pray with patients and family members "puts a sense of comfort in you," says Chris Barkley. "Normally, doctors don't do that, and it probably makes people feel closer to the doctor. You want them to care just as much as you do."

In most of the world, the poor and sick are ignored. In Lourdes, they are number one, and people say they are drawn there because they believe it is a place of great faith.