Rhina Guidos

Chalatenango, Bishop Oswaldo Escobar Aguilar said, means "valley of sand and water" in the area's indigenous language, "but in the 1980s, it became a valley of blood." And some of the blood spilled was that of the four U.S. Catholic women.

How the women lived and worked inspired Melissa Altman and her husband, Peter, to move their young family to El Salvador.

On a bright and clear January afternoon, Bishop Oswaldo Escobar Aguilar walked into a cemetery and gently dusted off a white name plate on top of a sky-blue block of tombs. Making plans for the year ahead, he told secretary Violeta Esmeralda Serrano nearby that they needed to make sure the tombs were decorated with flowers Dec. 2.

In an opinion piece in The Washington Post daily newspaper, Sr. Norma Pimentel, known for her work with migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border near Brownsville, Texas, made a public plea July 6 to keep an eye on the plight of asylum-seekers during the coronavirus pandemic.

The way ethnic communities have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus is a common topic during New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's daily news conferences on how the state he runs is handling the pandemic.

People often telephone Sr. Maria Elena Romero, a Capuchin Franciscan Poor Clare in Wilmington, Delaware, to ask for her to pray for a personal intention, to sound out a problem, sometimes just to cry.