A broad investor coalition involving religious orders, labor unions and state pension funds that control more than $3 trillion in assets is working with the nation's leading drug distributors as corporate annual meeting season nears.

"The Lord really wants there to be a path of fidelity and greater coherence, and I feel that there is great potential in intercongregational work, that the more things we take on intercongregationally, the more we can achieve."

GSR Today - The gathering in Bangkok gave opportunity for female Asian theologians, including 31 sisters, to share with one another theological insights from their studies and to keep alive the vision of the Women of Wisdom and Action initiative.

A set of mysterious petroglyphs lie at the heart of the indigenous Ngäbe-Buglé religion and written language — and those petroglyphs now lie at the bottom of a stagnant, foul-smelling reservoir. The flooding caused by the Barro Blanco hydroelectric project nearly three years ago constitutes an ongoing violation of their religious and cultural rights, say Ngäbe-Buglé leaders, in addition to causing widespread damage to orchards, farmland and fishing that the communities depended on for food and livelihood. Sr. Edia "Tita" López of the Sisters of Mercy agrees.

Recent credible sexual abuse allegations in India and East Timor have underscored the fears of many in the church that clerical sex abuse is rife in South, Southeast and North Asia, which have a collective population of at least 120 million Catholics.

The Sister Water Project is just one of dozens of sister-led efforts to bring clean drinking water to those without. But project committee member Sr. Judy Sinnwell said the venture has been as much about changing those involved as it is about changing the lives of those given fresh water. "When we set out to do this, we were thinking of what would happen out there as we met a need," Sinnwell said. "But what happened in the congregation was it impacted all of us."

Rome - The heads of Catholic religious orders around the world apologized to clergy abuse survivors Feb. 19, acknowledging in a rare joint statement that orders habitually denied accusations in the past and covered up for abusers.

"Sexual abuse of nuns by clergy has long been a problem in Poland — and it's a very painful matter," Ursuline Sr. Jolanta Olech, secretary-general of the Warsaw-based Conference of Higher Superiors of Female Religious Orders, told Poland's Catholic Information Agency, KAI.

If pastoral leaders want to be "prophetic disciples" who call others into a closer relationship with Christ, they must first experience Christ's presence in their own lives, Sr. Miriam James Heidland told more than 1,000 attendees of the Mid-Atlantic Congress Feb. 15 in Baltimore.

For the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision not to hear the order's religious freedom claims in a legal challenge to a natural gas pipeline through their land in Pennsylvania came as no real surprise.

A group of city commissioners in the border city of McAllen, Texas, voted in mid-February to remove from a building a popular Catholic-administered center run by Sr. Norma Pimentel, who has been praised by Pope Francis for her work with migrants.

Sisters and other religious are bringing the issue of homelessness to the halls of the United Nations. They are among the 27 members of the NGO Working Group to End Homelessness. The group is pushing the U.N. to formally take up the growing problem as an emerging issue of focus and concern.