Catholic News Service

The decrease in the number of religious brothers and of women in religious orders is "worrying," according to the Vatican statistics office.

Early in the morning, in the chapel of his residence, Pope Francis celebrated Mass for the feast of the Annunciation and paid tribute to women religious, especially those caring for the sick during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While most of the work at a religious order's general headquarters continues in lockdown, a group of Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit found an additional activity where they could use their hands, do something together and be useful.

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.

The retired Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace might not be able to escape the news of the coronavirus' deadly impact on nursing homes just a few miles away from them, but they have a way to cope with it.

The principal of a Catholic girls' school was among 15 people killed in the impact of an explosion at a gas processing plant in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.

A number of priests and religious women have been among the nearly 2,000 people who have died in Italy because of illness connected with COVID-19.

In a nation where the faithful are not allowed to assemble for Mass, one church in northern Italy is full. The Church of All Saints in Bergamo — located in a cemetery in Italy's hardest-hit Lombardy region — has had to open its doors to dozens of coffins containing the remains of people who died of COVID-19.

Police have arrested an employee of a Catholic hospital and slapped conversion charges on him and a Catholic nun for allegedly hurting religious sentiments of Hindus in southern India's Karnataka state.

Guest commentary - When asked to offer examples of the church's faithful whose experiences are essential to our understanding of American Catholic history, there is one black woman's story that I always tell.

A Catholic social justice lobby, conducted a series of rural roundtables in 2018 and 2019 to take the pulse of Americans living in the heartland. The results, released at a Feb. 25 breakfast in Washington, show a series of economic, communication and social challenges that have confounded communities' ability to fight back.

Three new communities of women religious are bringing their missions of evangelization through helping others to the Charleston Diocese.

Feb. 12 was the 15th anniversary of Sr. Dorothy Stang's assassination in the Amazon region of Brazil. The U.S.-born nun is remembered as a crusader for the poor and the landless and for her love of the land and the Amazon forest.

When St. John Paul II canonized St. Josephine Bakhita in 2000, he said the saint is a "shining advocate of genuine emancipation," noting how despite her abduction into slavery at a young age, she well understood God to be the source of true freedom.

Mercy Sr. Mary Scullion, co-founder and executive director of Project HOME, an organization that helps the homeless in Philadelphia, was one of the many guests who attended the Feb. 4 State of the Union, which she hoped would draw attention to homelessness and inspire federal aid to alleviate it.

Sister Margaret Claydon, who was president of what is now Trinity Washington University from 1959 to 1975 and who set a national standard for Catholic women's education, died Feb. 1. She was 97.

Medical Missionaries of Mary Sr. Bernadette "Bernie" Kenny brought her nursing skills to Appalachian Virginia in 1978. She has written a book about her experience caring for those in southwest corner of the state.

When one is totally in love with the Lord, then poverty, chastity and obedience are not sacrifices, but vehicles of freedom, Pope Francis told consecrated men and women.

In an interview Jan. 29, just a few days before the annual celebration Feb. 2 of the World Day for Consecrated Life, Loreto Sr. Patricia Murray said, "The Holy Spirit is at work in building us as religious women into a global family."

According to Sr. Bethany Madonna, vocations director for the Sisters of Life, one's circumstances change, yet life is a gift.