Thomas Scaria

On completing one year as the leader of India's more than 130,000 women and men religious, Apostolic Carmel Sr. Maria Nirmalini shares with GSR her accomplishments and failures as well as her aspirations and plans.

This April marks the fourth anniversary of the 2019 Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, suicide bomb attacks on three churches and three luxury hotels. Some 200 sisters are involved in helping victims recover from their trauma.

With most members of the congregation coming from farming families, the Helpers of Mount Rosary in Alangar, India, have developed 40 acres of agricultural land that now serves as a model farm and training field.

Camillian nuns who run an HIV/AIDS rehabilitation center in Mangalaru have helped more than 400 HIV-infected women and children settle into healthy lives with jobs or marriage.

Alumni of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary's two colleges of social work, Nirmala Niketan and Roshni Nilaya, now head thousands of community-development projects at the grassroots across India.

Sr. Maria Gracia was among hundreds of women religious who prepared students for India's latest annual interschool cultural festival. She spoke to GSR about promoting art and culture among students in addition to education. 

A chance meeting with a transgender woman led members of the Sister of Our Lady of Fatima to ongoing ministry and training programs with the transgender community.

Holy Cross Srs. Fidelis Nedumpara and Clara Alappat founded Jeevodaya Ashram 27 years ago in the suburbs of Bengaluru, India, to help women who are released from prisons, and girls who are rescued from sex rackets.

Hundreds of Catholic nuns have joined activists in India to protest the under-construction Vizhinjam Port, which opponents say is causing environmental destruction and leading to displacement of the fishing community.

Catholic nuns from various congregations are engaged in saving India's young people from addictions to substances and alcohol.

St. Joseph of Saint-Marc Sr. Ligi Payyappilly, a native of India who is now a Ukraine citizen, has been using her network as a renowned retreat preacher to support her rescue operations and refugee services.

Sr. Mary Mascarenhas has been called "the Mother Teresa of Bengaluru" for her 40 years of outstanding work among leprosy patients. She shared with GSR her struggles for restoring the dignity of leprosy patients.

Catholic sisters in Sri Lanka join protesters calling for changes in Sri Lanka amid economic and political crises. The movement has united people from different ethnic and religious communities.

More than 400 women in the Indian cities Mangaluru and Bengaluru have taken up trades and self-employment projects to overcome pandemic trauma. Four congregations of women religious are helping them.

A convent in western Ukraine that until recently sheltered refugees has been turned into a retreat center where nuns use music therapy to console and comfort. A five-member band of trained musicians, all nuns, sings, prays and consoles people affected by depression and anxiety.

At Sumanahalli in Bengaluru, India, sisters use an integrated approach to treat and rehabilitate leprosy patients. "We follow different charisms and spirituality, but when we work together, they help people differently."

Sr. Dulcie Peiris, the superior of the Salvatorian formation center in Sri Lanka, said the nation's current economic crises are unlike anything she has experienced, "not even during the 30 years of civil war."

A Catholic nun from India serving the war-hit people of Ukraine says hungry and frustrated Russian soldiers now invade Ukrainian homes, loot food and rape women.

Some 80 Ukraine women and children — including baby Michael, born a day before the Russian invasion — are staying at the Sisters of St. Joseph of Saint-Marc convent in Mukachevo in western Ukraine.

"The sisters took us to their convent in their vehicles, hugged each of us with their love and warmth, gave us food, a warm hall to sleep in and escorted us in the morning to cross the Romania border," one student said.