Alistair Appleby, a GP who carried out the report published in the British Journal of General Practice, was prompted to after noticing how many of his patients needed spiritual questions answered.

Alex Bunn, a GP from the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF), told Premier why people are seeking help from GPs over vicars.

He explained: “I think in a previous age people would have gone straight to a pastor when their souls ached and would have recognised that kind of spiritual element.

“But now, we tend to want a medical label for some of those issues.”

Interviews with 19 GPs in Scotland found that some family doctors are dismissing the idea of spirituality because they don’t believe in organised religion.

However Bunn warned GPs not to ignore the spiritual needs of their patients.

He added: “I do believe we should skill-up and if there are Christian healthcare workers out there I would recommend they get in touch with CMF – we do offer training in how to deal with spiritual enquiries.

“I think we should be better equipped to deal with what patients are asking for which is how can they deal with what are often existential or spiritual problems.”

The study echoed this point as some GPs reported feeling frustrated by having little to offer patients with complex problems driven by social and emotional difficulties anything other than pills.

Bunn urged GPS and spiritual…

Mr Evans, 21, and Kate James, 20, want to move their son from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool to Rome for treatment and have launched a second application to the Supreme Court.

They have already lost fights in the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights after Mr Justice Hayden ruled that doctors could stop providing life-support treatment for the 23-month old.

Judges have heard that Alfie, born on May 9 2016, is in a semi-vegetative state and has a degenerative neurological condition doctors have not definitively diagnosed.

Mr Justice Hayden said flying Alfie to a foreign hospital would be wrong and pointless.

Mr Evans posted on Facebook that he flew to Rome on Tuesday evening and met the Pope on Wednesday morning.

Posting photos of himself kissing Pope Francis’s hand, he wrote: “Your holiness save our son.”

During his general audience afterwards, the Pope led the crowd in a moment of silent prayer for Alfie.

At the beginning of April, Francis tweeted his support for the youngster, posting: “It is my sincere hope that everything necessary may be done in order to continue compassionately accompanying little Alfie Evans, and that the deep suffering of his parents may be heard.

“I am praying for Alfie, for his family and for all who are involved.”

Earlier this week Francis said: “It’s our duty to do everything to care for life.”

The 23-month old has a degenerative neurological condition and is in a semi-vegetative state. 

His parents have appealed to the Pope after losing fights in the High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and European Court of Human Rights after Mr Justice Hayden ruled that doctors could stop providing life-support treatment for him. 

However, at the Catholic Bishop’s conference of We affirm our conviction that all those who are and have been taking the agonising decisions regarding the care of Alfie Evans act with integrity and for Alfie’s good as they see it.”

They continued to praise the hospital workers: “The professionalism and care for severely ill children shown at Alder Hey Hospital is to be recognised and affirmed. We know that recently reported public criticism of their work is unfounded as our chaplaincy care for the staff, and indeed offered to the family, has been consistently provided.”

The parents want to bring their son to Italy for treatment but Mr Justice Hayden said flying Alfie to a foreign hospital would be wrong and pointless. 

The bishops said: “It is for that Hospital to present to the British Courts, where crucial decisions in conflicts of opinion have to be taken, the medical reasons for an exception to be made in this tragic case.”

They concluded: “With the Holy Father, we pray that, with love and realism, everything will be done to…

Krish Kandiah, the founder of Home for Good, a fostering and adoption charity, wants the UK to adopt a law which is being brought in in Australia which would limit the often non-intentional funding of orphanages where children may be exploited.

He told Premier: “One of the things the Australian government has been really revolutionary on is taking the modern day slavery bill that was here in the UK and adding to it a clause around orphan trafficking.”

Explaining what orphanage trafficking is, Rebecca Nhep joint CEO of ACCIC international relief, an aid and development agency in Australia, told Premier: “It’s a type of human trafficking that involves the recruitment and movement of children, primarily from their families and communities into institutional care settings for the purpose of exploitation, which can look like harbouring children in situations which are detrimental to their care and detrimental to their development or it can also look like for the purpose of orphanage trafficking.”

Rebecca said many churches don’t know that it is “a business model, whereby children are being used as the commodity in order to illicit and attract for funding and donations.”

Often these orphanages are funded by generous donations, foreign aid budgets and visits from church groups but the supply supersedes the ‘demand’, therefore keeping children in homes and sometime kept…