Chris Herlinger

Chris Herlinger is international correspondent to Global Sisters Report and also writes on humanitarian and international issues for NCR. He has reported from South Sudan and Darfur, Sudan, as well as numerous other locales, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Kenya and Ethiopia and Liberia. He is the co-author, with Paul Jeffrey, of books on Haiti and Darfur, published by Seabury, and a third, on global hunger, published in 2015.

By this Author

Pat Murray gives workshop in Nairobi, 2016: Loreto Sr. Patricia Murray gives a workshop presentation in Nairobi in October 2016. Murray is a longtime champion of the global sisterhood and elevating the ministries and work of sisters. (GSR photo)

LCWR award honors Sr. Patricia Murray, quiet peacemaker who carries 'the hope of the transformation of lives'

Loreto Sr. Patty Murray recently received LCWR's 2022 Outstanding Leadership Award. Murray grew up in Dublin and says her love of Irish poetry, storytelling and ritual help affirm hope during her 50-year ministry.

Members of the faculty and student body of the newly opened school of nursing at Nazareth Hospital in Mokama, India, in October 1953. The students are a mix of Indian women and nuns from other orders, pictured in full white veils and wimples.

Q & A with Jyoti Thottam, exploring the international history of an Indian hospital

Jyoti Thottam hopes readers of her book on Sisters of Charity of Nazareth who started a hospital in India in 1947 appreciate "what it was like to be a woman in this period, a woman really making her own way."

Maryknoll Sr. Joji Fenixm, left, is working to preserve native trees and plant life at a tree nursery at the Maryknoll Sisters Pastoral Care Center in Darien, Panama.

Monday Starter: Maryknoll begins discernment process in the face of climate change

Seven Maryknoll Sisters are leading the congregation's discernment initiative based on the recognition that climate change is altering the nature of mission work.

A statue of Jesus stands over the casket of a person who died after contracting COVID-19 before the burial at a graveyard in New Delhi on April 29, 2021. (CNS/Reuters/Adnan Abidi)

Monday Starter: Sisters in India denied compensation for COVID-19 deaths

Monday Starter - Government authorities declined to pay the COVID-19 compensation for the deaths of four Catholic sisters to their community in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Monday Starter: Advocates hail UN resolution on universal right to clean environment

Monday Starter: The U.N. resolution "is a wonderful step forward," said Sr. Durstyne "Dusty" Farnan. "It means more member states are mindful and committed to a safer environment for us all."

Bishop Nicolas Djomo, center front, failed to follow Vatican guidelines in dealing with allegations of a 2020 rape of a 14-year-old girl by a diocesan priest, The Washington Post has reported. (CNS/Paul Haring)

Monday Starter: Washington Post report says DRC bishop covered up rape allegations

Monday Starter: A bishop in the Democratic Republic of Congo failed to follow Vatican guidelines in dealing with allegations of a 2020 rape of a 14-year-old girl by a priest, The Washington Post has reported.

A still image from "New Leaders," a new video from the International Union of Superiors General's Sisters Advocating Globally, an advocacy project to inform the public on the ministries of Catholic sisters (Courtesy of UISG)

Monday Starter: New UISG video highlights sisters' ministries globally

A new video released by the International Union of Superiors General features sisters who speak on the importance of including marginalized and vulnerable communities in dialogue regarding development.

A person in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, lights a candle at a memorial site July 5 near the parade route the day after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade. Seven people were killed and dozens injured. (CNS/Reuters/Cheney Orr)

Monday Starter: Mercy Sisters denounce Ohio killing, Illinois mass shooting

Monday Starter: The Sisters of Mercy have denounced the fatal June 27 police shooting of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man, in Akron, Ohio, and a mass shooting during a July Fourth parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

Sr. Josephine Murigi, a member of Our Lady of the Missions and Solidarity with South Sudan, walks with children in a camp for more than 5,000 displaced people in Riimenze in June 2017. Families were displaced in late 2016 and early 2017 as fighting betwee

New book on Solidarity with South Sudan examines a 'communal journey' of religious

On the eve of the 11th anniversary of South Sudan's independence, a new book traces the history of Solidarity with South Sudan, noting that the collaborative 14-year-old ministry formed and run by female and male religious has been a model in humanitarian efforts across congregational lines. 

Demonstrators in favor of banning abortion gather June 15 near the Supreme Court in Washington. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

The next step in a post-Roe world is to support women, sisters say

Reaction among Catholic women religious to the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade included jubilation, acceptance and pledges to support women who are pregnant and to help with other women's issues.

Sr. Dorothy Hall was honored in February 2020 as one of the inaugural recipients of the Bakhita Woman of Faith and Service Award. (Courtesy of the Sisters of St. Dominic of Blauvelt, New York)

Q & A with Sr. Dorothy Hall, feeding Harlem's hungry as the pandemic continues

Sr. Dorothy Hall, a member of the Sisters of St. Dominic of Blauvelt and lifelong New York City resident, talks to GSR about her ministry of feeding the hungry in Harlem. "I don't think anyone should be hungry," she says.

People react outside the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center, where students had been transported from Robb Elementary School after a shooting, in Uvalde, Texas, May 24. (CNS/Reuters/Marco Bello)

Catholic sisters join outcry over Texas shooting, call for stronger gun safety

In response to the gun deaths of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Texas, U.S. sisters' congregations added their voices to that of Pope Francis and other faith leaders in calling for stronger gun control efforts.

Sr. Mary Teresa Barron, right, superior general of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles, speaks May 3 at the UISG assembly in Rome with Loreto Sr. Patricia Murray, left, UISG executive secretary, and Claretian Sr. Jolanta Kafka. (CNS)

Monday Starter: UISG selects new president and vice president

Monday Starter: "Building bridges with people, especially those most in need, is a call to be closer to those who need us and are waiting for us," outgoing president Sr. Jolanta Kafka said at the UISG assembly in Rome.

Women religious look through their plenary materials May 6, the final day of the 2022 plenary of the International Union of Superiors General in Rome. (GSR photo/Chris Herlinger)

UISG plenary concludes, calling sisters to renewal, transformation and inclusivity

At the end of UISG plenary in Rome, sisters shared this pledge: "I commit myself to live vulnerable synodality through service as a leader, animating it within the community, together with the people of God."

Pope Francis greets Claretian Missionary Sr. Jolanta Kafka, president of the International Union of Superiors General, during a May 5 audience with participants in the plenary assembly of the union at the Vatican. (CNS/Vatican Media)

Pope warns UISG against congregational renewal that is 'frozen in time'

Pope Francis told leaders of women religious congregations that synodality is a way to affirm the original intentions of the founders of religious congregations while meeting the needs of a rapidly changing world.

Nuns talk and use their phones during a break as superiors of women's religious orders meet for the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superior Generals in Rome May 3. (CNS/Paul Haring)

Stay grounded in tradition while taking chances, biblical scholar tells UISG

Speaking to leaders of women's congregations gathered in Rome, Jessie Rogers said if the faithful "hold on too tightly to how God acted in the past, they might overlook the new thing that God is doing in the present."

Ukrainian children from a group home for orphans in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, play in the yard of the motherhouse of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Angels April 20 in Konstancin-Jeziorna, Poland. (CNS/Adrian Kowalewski)

UISG begins $1 million grant distribution to sisters serving Ukraine refugees

The International Union of Superiors General has begun distributing a $1 million grant by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to assist women's religious communities as they serve refugees who have fled the war in Ukraine.

Cardinal João Braz de Aviz is assisted by Comboni Sr. Gabriella Bottani during a May 3 Mass with superiors of women's religious orders at the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superior Generals in Rome. (CNS/Paul Haring)

At plenary, Brazilian cardinal praises UISG for walking the synodal path

Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de Aviz praised the International Union of Superiors General for years of commitment to acting in a synodal way. Braz de Aviz spoke May 3, the second day of the group's triennial plenary.

Nearly 520 sisters attended the opening-day session of the International Union of Superiors General's triennial plenary, the organization's first major in-person event since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

UISG opens triennial plenary with talk of vulnerability as way into the future

Hundreds of sisters from six continents are in Rome for the triennial plenary of the International Union of Superiors General, the organization's first major in-person event since the start of the pandemic.

Delegates at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in New York before the April 25 opening of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (U.N. photo)

Monday Starter: Thanks to Dominican hosts, Indigenous representatives join UN meeting

The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is focusing on the ways extractive industries harm Indigenous people and their lands. Rarely do industries seek Indigenous consent, speakers said.