Chris Herlinger

Sisters join clergy and lay partners at a recent U.N. summit, hoping to bridge the gap between global and grassroots forums while emphasizing the root causes of poverty.

A new film to be shown on North American religious television channels and several streaming platforms portrays Blessed Clelia Merloni, the founder of the Sisters of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Amazon Frontlines is "the first organization of Indigenous and Western human rights and climate activists to receive the Prize," the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation said.

Monday Starter: The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas have condemned the July 6 police shooting of an unarmed Black woman in Springfield, Illinois. 

Sisters and clergy attending meetings assessing the United Nations' sustainable development goals affirmed the progress they see in small-scale projects. However, they say the 2030 deadline is not realistic.

As the administrator of the St. Joseph's Home for Children near Zagreb, Croatia, Sr. Marija Lucija Eršek gives children safety, structure and order — things that they often do not have in their families. 

The Catholic immigration advocacy group CLINIC has condemned the Biden administration's new restrictions for asylum seekers, saying they endanger lives and could increase family separations.

Former NBA star Charles Barkley is donating $1 million to St. Mary's Academy in New Orleans, a prominent Black Catholic school founded by the Sisters of the Holy Family. Barkley was inspired by the work of two academy graduates.

Some 1 million pilgrims a year flock to Medjugorje, a Marian shrine located in a village 16 miles southwest from the city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Christian theology has long been based on words. But are there other ways of understanding faith? Can music be one of them? Verbum Dei Sr. Maeve Heaney explores such questions in Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt.

Veteran participant Good Shepherd Sr. Winifred Doherty said it is important for sisters to take part in the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women: "We do excellent work on the ground and oftentimes innovative work."

The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security has announced a new initiative to monitor conflict from a gender perspective — a tool that could be helpful to sisters doing work in conflict areas. 

The film is also meant as a tribute to Catholic sisters everywhere, whose work the executive producer believes is often overlooked and not appreciated enough within the church or by the wider society.

"With God's help, we survive," says one Ukrainian villager. That source of hope is made tangible by the presence of St. Basil sisters, who continue to visit Preobrazhenka and other villages at least once a month.

Monday Starter: The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, has initiated a campaign focusing on ways of engaging and examining the November 2024 U.S. national election campaign. 

Sisters interviewed in Croatia and Bosnia have lived in the shadows of World War II and the later Yugoslav wars. As such, the sisters have embodied physical courage, the need to remember — and the ability to forgive.

Though the efforts of sisters in Bosnia are small in scale, and often involve those the sisters have befriended, they are helping mend wounds in a country where war fueled ethnic and religious animosity.

Called to Action: NETWORK's 50 Years of Political Ministry, by Mercy Sr. Mara Rutten, chronicles how 47 sisters, inspired by Catholic social teaching and Vatican II, came together in 1971 to "build a more just world."

With "Hope Amid Turmoil," the most ambitious and challenging project we have undertaken at GSR, we've been inspired by the incredible courage and deep faith of sisters serving in conflict areas throughout the world.

Sisters living in Croatia and neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina describe fallout from the wars of 30 years ago and about their current ministries that are helping to heal the wounds of lands once riven by conflict.