♪ welcome. welcome. i'm bob abernethy. it's good to have you with us on this special weekend for christians and jews. western christians around the world observed holy week, leading up to easter sunday. in washington, president obama held his third annual easter prayer breakfast on wednesday. obama called easter a time of hope and courage and said jesus' sacrifice helps him keep his own problems in perspective. >> jesus told us as much in the book of john, when he said, "in this world you will have trouble." i heard an amen. [ laughter ] let me repeat. "in this world, you will have trouble." amen! "but take heart!" [ laughter ] meanwhile, at the vatican, pope benedict xvi used his holy thursday homily to scold priests who advocate ordaining women or changing church doctrine on priestly celibacy. in particularly strong language, benedict warned against disobedience by those who say they want to bring the church more up-to-date. in other news, a new poll shows solid support for president obama among jewish voters. according to the public religion research institute, a little over 60% say they plan to vote for the president in november. that's similar to the amount of support he had at this point in 2008. those surveyed were also asked what issue is most important to them as voters. more than half, 51%, said the economy was most important. only 4% said israel. faith leaders in alabama are calling for reforms to the state's immigration law, described as the toughest such legislation in the country. a group of more than a dozen clergy released a television ad this week saying the law hurts families and could punish churches for helping those in need. alabama's law went into effect last year, although some of the provisions, including one that banned harboring or transporting illegal immigrants, were blocked by a federal judge. several major christian groups are also weighing in on arizona's immigration law, which goes before the supreme court later this month. in a brief filed last week, they argued that arizona's law could prevent churches from helping immigrants. we have a special report today on parish nurses, the growing number of registered nurses on the staffs of churches, of many denominations, helping people with a combination of physical and spiritual care, and helping them navigate the health care system. deborah potter reports from elk grove, illinois. >> reporter: many churches hold health fairs, but this blood pressure screening at queen of the rosary roman catholic church in suburban chicago is a little different. >> you actually cook for yourself? that's good. >> reporter: it's a regular event organized and run by diane tieman, a registered nurse who's on the church staff. >> i do health education classes. i do blood pressure screenings. i take calls from people that want information about the health care system, about themselves and their health concerns. >> reporter: and she does a lot more. home visits are an essential part of tieman's job as a parish or faith community nurse, helping church members, many of whom are elderly, prepare for doctor visits and surgeries. >> let's just listen to your heart. >> reporter: parish nurses are health counselors and advocates. they do not provide treatment. but there's more to the job than checking vital signs, reviewing medications, and helping people navigate the health care system. >> people just need to be heard and need to be listened to, and as a parish nurse that's one of the greatest things that we do is be present and just listen. >> diane's been a gem. if she doesn't make it to heaven, nobody will. she's been great. >> reporter: parish nursing is one of the fastest growing specialty practices recognized by the american nurses association. registered nurses with at least two years' experience are certified after receiving additional training on how to care for the whole person, not just physically, but spiritually. >> it's a matter of being an integrator of health and faith, and for us as parish nurses we really believe in that spiritual component, how important that is to an individual. and i know when i work with individuals many times if spiritually they're not well, it's very difficult for them to become physically well. >> reporter: parish nurses also serve as lay ministers bringing prayers and sometimes communion to the people they visit. >> i would have been lost without you. you kept me all in one piece, you know what i mean? >> reporter: parish nursing traces its roots back to the 1800s, when religious orders in the u.s. and europe offered care to the wider community. the modern program was launched 25 years ago by a lutheran pastor here in chicago, and it's since spread around the world. some 15,000 parish nurses are now at work in the united states alone. >> it started out christian, but actually we have a lot of jewish faith community nurses. we have some muslim -- our crescent nurses. and we also have some that are working in buddhist communities, hindu, and others. >> reporter: maureen daniels, herself a former parish nurse, now trains nurses to work in faith communities, looking after the whole person. >> we're not just our heart or our liver or our kidneys, you know. we have -- there's the person that's there, and part of being a person is that whole dimension of spirit that makes us who we are. and you can't break it down into pieces the way we've been doing, you know. it really needs to be, you know, who is this whole person? what is their life about? >> come in, susan. have a seat. >> reporter: donna smith-pupillo coordinates a network of parish nurses in and around st. louis. some work mostly with the poor and uninsured or with young families. but they all share the same sense of purpose. >> parish nursing is about the intentional care of the spirit and bringing back in for all of us a sense of wholeness that embraces both the mind, the body, and the spirit and that it's doable for almost all congregations, synagogues, and mosques. it is doable for almost all congregations. it is doable. it's not something that has to be paid. you can use volunteers. you can find someone who's interested and wants to serve. >> reporter: most parish nurses, in fact, are unpaid and work part-time. some, like diane tieman, are paid partly by a church and partly by a hospital, where they also serve. on this day, tieman has brought a hospitalized parishioner a handmade shawl. >> it is filled with prayers, and this one was actually made by jerri. >> thank jerri for me. >> i will. >> reporter: there are some things a parish nurse can't do, like administer medications or give injections. but they can offer programs other nurses don't, like the queen of the rosary knitting group that makes the shawls -- >> dear lord, bless my hands. >> reporter: -- and prays for those who will receive them. tieman also works with other faith communities setting up events like this labyrinth walk at a nearby methodist church. >> i really feel like when people walk the labyrinth it's a mind, body, and spirit experience because it not only makes you relaxed and stress relieved, but for those who regard it as a spiritual tool it really helps you to build your relationship with god. >> reporter: tieman is not a member of the catholic church where she works, although some parishes nurses are. either way, experts say, the best predictor of success is the strong support of the pastor. >> i can't be there for all those people all the time, and so she fills in, and parishioners fill in doing that. and she also keeps me apprised when there's a special need, or somebody requests to see me, or someone is dying, that i can go and see them. i don't know what we would do without diane. >> reporter: many parish nurses see their work as more of a calling than a job. >> for me it is. yeah, it is. i feel blessed and really humble, because for me in this job, it really has increased my own faith as i work with people. >> she knows where i've come from. we've been prayer partners a long time. without it, i don't think i would survive. our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. >> reporter: parish nursing can be demanding and stressful, like any other kind of nursing, but it has its own rewards. >> when i'm with somebody and look at them face-to-face or meet them heart-to-heart, i feel like it's like meeting god head on and looking in his eyes. >> reporter: in elk grove, illinois, i'm deborah potter for "religion & ethics newsweekly." this weekend of great religious music in church, we have a story on a special group. it's the boston archdiocesan choir school in cambridge, massachusetts, the only catholic all-boys choir school in the country, with intensive training and beautiful singing. judy valente reports. >> so i want about four people per bench. go. grab your journals. >> reporter: these boys, grades six through eight, are having fun examining mollusks and worms in a typical science class. the school they attend is anything but typical, however. there are only 40 students here -- all boys -- and though they study the usual subjects, these boys are here for something more. this is the boston archdiocesan choir school. boys come here to sing. music is so important that this place has been described not as a school with a choir, but as a choir with a school. the music director is john robinson. >> they would have started in the monastic tradition, when boys would have gone to the monastery to seek an education, and at some point during the time that the boys were getting this education, they would have joined the monks in singing. ♪ >> reporter: robinson, now 29, is the product of a famous choir school in england, where boys' choirs have long been a part of the anglican tradition. >> in england where i'm from, the choir schools began perhaps in the seventh century. initially, the monks would have been singing chant, all on one note, and as the history of music progressed they started to sing in more than one part. they needed the boys to sing higher parts. the unique sound of a boys' choir is particularly fascinating to work with, because we know it's the sound that composers had in their ears when they were conceiving much of the music. >> reporter: boys' choirs were never a large part of the catholic tradition in the u.s., but in 1963 the choirmaster at st. paul's church in cambridge, massachusetts, established a choir school to help preserve and promote sacred classical music in the u.s. today, the st. paul boys choir is the only one of its kind in the country. there are no other catholic choir schools. the reasons -- changing tastes in music, the costs of training the boys, and the trend toward boy-girl choirs. here, daily rehearsals start each morning before 8:00. >> at that first rehearsal, i'll do some exercises to warm up different parts of their voices. okay, let's get the lips warmed up. we do arpeggios with funny words. "my car has flat tires" is one that we often do. >> reporter: the boys, most of whom are catholic, must learn to sight-read hundreds of pieces of music. >> the boys sing music right from the word "go" in music history. they sing classical music as well as the music by mozart, hayden, mass settings by those composers, and into the romantic period with motet-bruckner, mendelssohn, romantic composers, and then into the modern day as well. >> good. let's just try the right hand alone from here, okay? >> reporter: each student is also required to learn to play the piano. some learn other instruments as well. alex pattavina, a tenth grader, learned to play the organ when he was at the choir school and now plays at a sunday mass here. >> it's a lovely sound, but it's just very unclear, the words "i cry out 'praised be the lord.'" ♪ i cry out praised be the lord ♪ >> reporter: the rigorous curriculum makes recruiting a challenge. to find boys who can sing like this, robinson visits dozens of schools in the boston area, auditioning third and fourth graders. >> we'd sing a song, maybe "happy birthday" or the national anthem or something like that, and then test them each individually, just very briefly and very positively, to see whether they have that ability to match pitch. when we say "matching pitch" with a boy we mean that we play or sing a note to a boy and we see if he can sing that note back to us accurately. the one word that defines what we're looking for is "potential" that we don't expect to find boys who can already do all the things that we're going to teach. >> when i was in the fourth grade, i tried out for a play, and it had a singing part in it, and my music teacher said that i had an amazing voice, and she told my mom about this school, and she sent me here, and then when i came here i started to realize i had a good voice. >> reporter: the school's $5,000 annual tuition doesn't cover the cost of educating the boys. the difference is made up through donations and money the choir earns from what are called "working scholarships," that is, public performances like this one at fenway park. ♪ the have also sung at weddings and at funerals, including those of rose kennedy and tip o'neill. they sing at masses six days a week. but some boys may have to drop out of the choir before they graduate. >> boys' voices are going to change, and there's very little that can be done about that. for many boys it really is no man's land vocally, and the sound that they can produce is unpredictable and sometimes embarrassing, so we just have to be very kind to them when that day comes because, of course, it's quite shocking that suddenly their whole life for the last four years as they've known it singing these beautiful treble parts is no longer happening in that way. >> reporter: those whose voices have changed can sometimes continue with the choir, learning to sing in falsetto. others will serve as altar boys or ushers or will sit with the congregation, singing to encourage those around them. ♪ >> when i'm conducting the choir so many things are going through my mind. you're thinking about the effect it's having on the people listening. sometimes their concentration will wander. they'll start to do something they shouldn't be doing. you have to wave at them and that kind of thing, and that can be very distracting to a performance, so you're constantly trying to train those things out of them and get them purely to focus on singing. ♪ >> reporter: how do you impart a love of this difficult music to these very young boys? >> they come to it, and they find something intrinsically beautiful about it, and other times they don't really get it, and then my job's harder to try and show them what's good about it or what's interesting about it, and different boys react in so many different ways. sometimes they learn from each other. you'll get one boy who loves it, and other people catch on when they see that he loves it. >> reporter: forrest eimold is 12 years old. he sings, plays the organ, and composes. >> it's one thing to sing or play a piece by somebody, like let's say mozart, and you can definitely express emotion in that, but it's another thing entirely to be able to express your own emotions and to write exactly what you want. >> reporter: what have you written? what have you composed lately? >> i've composed many works for piano. i recently finished my second piano sonata. i'm currently working on a mass for the choir school to sing, actually. and i've done some other short pieces. >> reporter: at high mass on sunday morning, the boys sing with the men. >> when the boys sing with the men of the choir on a sunday morning, the dynamic is rather different. if they hear professional adult singers singing, they're far more likely to imitate something which is good like that and to learn from the way that the adults around them are singing, so i think it's a very positive dynamic. >> reporter: the pastor of st. paul parish is father michael drea. >> that music that the boys provide can be such a source of inspiration to catholics as well as those who are searching to better understand who god is and to come to a greater knowledge and appreciation of the many gifts and graces that god bestows on individuals. >> i think the boys get an absolutely unique experience, because they're learning confidence to sing in front of people from an early age. one of the most satisfying things of all is to see a boy who doesn't realize he has potential and talent coming into the school in the fifth grade or the fourth grade and leaving three or four years later having learned so many skills that he would never even have imagined he could have learned when he first came in, and seeing that confidence grow is a wonderful thing. >> reporter: for "religion & ethics newsweekly," this is judy valente in cambridge, massachusetts. finally, on our calendar this weekend, it's easter for western christians. for orthodox christians, it's palm sunday, in preparation for their easter, or pascha, celebrated next weekend. and jews continue their weeklong observance of passover, which began friday night. that's our program for now. happy easter and happy passover. i'm bob abernethy. you can follow us on twitter and facebook, find us on youtube, and watch us anytime, anywhere on smart phones. there's also much more on our website, including more about easter and passover. you can comment on all of our stories and share them. audio and video podcasts are also available. join us at pbs.org. as we leave you, easter celebrations at the national cathedral in washington, d.c. ♪ ♪