Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans

From 2020 to 2022, more than 900 women and men entered religious life. They all took their own, sometimes circuitous routes to get there.

"Sisters Aging Well Together," a pilot program funded by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, is providing sisters ways to assess the health of their communities and to identify and address aging-related concerns.  

The Panhandle Franciscans were looking for an updated way to express the heritage of their foundress in a world they believe is in need of the Gospel. They found it in multiple ways, which included opening a coffee shop.

How do religious women cope with the suffering of terminal illness? Here is the testimony of two of them. Margaret Lewis, 90 years old. She is suffering from cancer. She feels no pity for herself and endures thanks to the prayers of the women around her. Mary Graig, 56. She draws strength from the prayers of her community and the service she still gives to others. Members of the Sisters of St. Francis in Philadelphia, both credit their parents with surrounding them with the love and strength that enable them to face the challenges of living with chronic illness and pain.

It has been 20 years since the publication of Aging with Grace, a book about the effects of aging on 678 School Sisters of Notre Dame. The so-called "Nun Study" remains relevant. Meanwhile, congregations offer examples of graceful aging and care.

When it comes to helping immigrants, Catholic sisters are one of the few constants in a tempestuous American landscape often shaped by hostility and division. In the 21st century, they leverage the power of institutions they founded.

When nativist powers like the Ku Klux Klan and the Oregon governor confronted the religious community of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in the 1920s over schools, the ensuing case set the precedent for how children are educated in the U.S. today.

The story of Catholic sisters was that of the rise of American Catholicism writ large: immigrants confronted with suspicion and resentment who ultimately succeeded in not only integrating themselves into American culture but leaving an indelible mark on it.

For Catholic sisters, as for many others in America and across the globe, it's been a brutal year. Isolation. Disrupted schedules and forced adaptation. Dark nights of the soul. Loss. Global Sisters Report talked to sisters about grappling with deep spiritual questions.

There's no cutting corners in Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Alice Hess' math classes, her students say. But if they do the work, they add, this memorable teacher's faith in them seems boundless.

Reflecting the diversity of vowed life in generation, ethnicity and temperament, the five women who live at the Dominicans Sisters of Peace house in New Haven explore facets of religious life together.

Though the pandemic has been "overwhelming, and everyone has had to adjust to a new way of living," women religious, like everybody else, find a sense of balance by looking outside themselves.

An everyday reality of religious life that gets little formal attention: lasting friendships between sisters and women who have left the religious communities that they once called home.

For centuries, nuns both in Europe and as immigrants to the U.S. have been ahead of their time, bringing fervor and entrepreneurial skill to their mission of tending the sick and preventing illnesses from spreading.

Mercy Sr. Theresa Kane's televised statement to Pope John Paul II, a politely worded but direct challenge about including women in all church ministries, drew intense media coverage, spurred scrutiny of U.S. sisters and marked a new era of progress.