Her faith receded while reporting on the horrors of war but, says the BBC broadcaster, living with multiple sclerosis has led to a deeper spiritual reflection

Science has answers for many things today, but still nothing to explain the randomness of suffering. When it strikes apparently without mercy, it leads many back to religion – if not for a watertight explanation, then at least for a way of framing the profound questions posed. As the BBC’s Caroline Wyatt, diagnosed in 2015 with multiple sclerosis, knows all too well. “You do find yourself on occasion thinking, Why me?” she admits. “But then, the next second, you ask, why not me? I’ve found no easy answer, but I do pray about it.”

Those who follow the BBC’s schedules may have noticed of late that we are seeing less on screen of the intrepid 52-year-old Wyatt who, after stints as the corporation’s person-on-the-ground in Berlin, Moscow and Paris, became its first ever female defence correspondent in 2007, regularly reporting on the main evening news bulletins amid the bombs and bullets of Baghdad, Basra, Kosovo and Kabul, before in 2014 she took over the religious affairs brief. But we are certainly hearing more of her on air, and her distinctive husky voice: twice a week presenting Radio 4’s PM, plus fronting the World Service’s The World This Week and even on occasion filling in for the doyenne of them all, Kate Adie, on From Our Own Correspondent.