Chris Herlinger

Some 1 million pilgrims a year flock to Medjugorje, a Marian shrine located in a village 16 miles southwest from the city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Christian theology has long been based on words. But are there other ways of understanding faith? Can music be one of them? Verbum Dei Sr. Maeve Heaney explores such questions in Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt.

Veteran participant Good Shepherd Sr. Winifred Doherty said it is important for sisters to take part in the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women: "We do excellent work on the ground and oftentimes innovative work."

The Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security has announced a new initiative to monitor conflict from a gender perspective — a tool that could be helpful to sisters doing work in conflict areas. 

The film is also meant as a tribute to Catholic sisters everywhere, whose work the executive producer believes is often overlooked and not appreciated enough within the church or by the wider society.

"With God's help, we survive," says one Ukrainian villager. That source of hope is made tangible by the presence of St. Basil sisters, who continue to visit Preobrazhenka and other villages at least once a month.

Monday Starter: The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, has initiated a campaign focusing on ways of engaging and examining the November 2024 U.S. national election campaign. 

Sisters interviewed in Croatia and Bosnia have lived in the shadows of World War II and the later Yugoslav wars. As such, the sisters have embodied physical courage, the need to remember — and the ability to forgive.

Though the efforts of sisters in Bosnia are small in scale, and often involve those the sisters have befriended, they are helping mend wounds in a country where war fueled ethnic and religious animosity.

Called to Action: NETWORK's 50 Years of Political Ministry, by Mercy Sr. Mara Rutten, chronicles how 47 sisters, inspired by Catholic social teaching and Vatican II, came together in 1971 to "build a more just world."

With "Hope Amid Turmoil," the most ambitious and challenging project we have undertaken at GSR, we've been inspired by the incredible courage and deep faith of sisters serving in conflict areas throughout the world.

Sisters living in Croatia and neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina describe fallout from the wars of 30 years ago and about their current ministries that are helping to heal the wounds of lands once riven by conflict. 

"For the people in the West Bank, it's getting worse," the sister said in a Nov. 30 telephone interview with GSR. "So many things are happening. People are afraid."

The Kentucky-based ministry said it was time "to shine a new, bright light on our mission," saying the change of name reinforces its mission of empowering women "as agents of safe water for their families and communities."

Sr. Margaret Farrell addresses the continued issue of homelessness and the need for affordable housing — a situation that remains critical in Los Angeles and other large American cities.

Among the continued challenges are declining access for the economically poor to food, rising gender inequities and illiteracy, and increasing government restrictions on religious freedoms.

At Hilton humanitarian symposium, panelists say we must find ways to collectively contribute to solutions, "recognizing that our world's systems are interconnected beyond geographic borders." 

This year's Hilton Humanitarian Prize given to the One Acre Fund recognizes the need to make visible an essential group in the world and in Africa, says Presentation Sr. Joyce Meyer: "Farmers are too often invisible."

The opera depicts the spiritual journey of Sister of St. Joseph Helen Prejean as she navigates the pain and redemption of death row ministry. 

A sister who lives in the West Bank told GSR that she and other sisters are keenly aware of the suffering that has befallen both Israelis and Palestinians in the wake of the Hamas attacks.