GSR Staff

Few years have felt as connected to the previous one as 2021 — largely because the global pandemic of 2020 continued this year. Amid COVID-19 and other challenges, sisters served with commitment and care. Here is a rundown of 2021 as chronicled in Global Sisters Report.

GSR Today - Welcome to the fifth year of our monthly series called The Life. Our 2021-22 panel of 20 sisters will reflect on issues that impact the lives of Catholic women religious around the globe.

Global Sisters Report is supplementing NCR and EarthBeat coverage of COP26, the U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow, Scotland, with updates and dispatches sent to us by sisters and/or congregational representatives attending COP26 in person or virtually.

The killing of Sacred Heart Srs. Mary Daniel Abut and Regina Roba along a South Sudan highway Aug. 16 has shocked sisters and supporters throughout several African nations, Rome and the United States.

The Associated Church Press and the Religion Communicators Council have recognized Global Sisters Report and National Catholic Reporter for work in 2020, including reporting, columns and book reviews.

Tell us - The COVID-19 pandemic has upended all of our lives. Global Sisters Report would like you to tell us how. 

Sisters worldwide are finding ways to highlight the season with the people they minister to and within their own communities, despite COVID-19 restrictions. Here's a sampling of such efforts from around the world.

In what has become an annual tradition of assessing the year, Global Sisters Report held an extended discussion with the leaders of the International Union of Superiors General and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The sisters spoke with GSR on Dec. 10; the 2020 conversation, naturally, focused on the effects of COVID-19.

Live blog - It's Election Day in the United States. Women religious across the country are observing it in different ways. 

GSR Today - Welcome to the fourth year of our monthly series called The Life. Our 2020-21 panel of 20 sisters from around the world will share their reflections on the unique, challenging lives of Catholic women religious.

Women religious continue to minister to those who need help. Updates from sisters and their adapted their ministries during COVID-19 include Tanzania, Panama, Nigeria, Vietnam, two places in India, and Kentucky in the U.S. 

Women religious continue to minister to those who need help in the face of a deadly, ongoing pandemic. This week, GSR writers provide updates on how sisters have adapted their ministries during COVID-19.

Between Good Friday, April 10, and May 10, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice, or Felician Sisters, in Livonia, Michigan, lost 12 sisters to COVID-19.

GSR Today - In February, months before the global spread of the coronavirus, Global Sisters Report launched a series focusing on Catholic sisters helping those who are homeless or lack adequate shelter worldwide.

GSR Today - In February, months before the global spread of the coronavirus, Global Sisters Report launched a series focusing on Catholic sisters helping those who are homeless or lack adequate shelter worldwide.

"We're taking this as an opportunity to grow spiritually and to fall in love with the life again. We're trying to see this as a gift from God, as time we can set aside without needing to ask permission."

Congregations share how they are reacting to the crisis — praying, bringing people together online, making masks for health care workers, carrying on limited ministries. "Religious life has prepared me for this," says one sister.

Social distance prayer, done creatively, still produces spiritual unity. That’s what sisters are finding amid strict separations from each other and their usual ministries during the indeterminate period of the coronavirus’ spread around the world. GSR talked to a number of congregations to find out how they were maintaining a core aspect of religious life — community.

We would like to hear how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected your community's ministries and how you connect with one another. 

Global Sisters Report's 2019 coverage of Catholic women religious around the world was recognized recently with seven awards by the Associated Church Press, which also recognized National Catholic Reporter with three awards for Vatican-related news.