Luis Donaldo González

"I truly believe in the power of community initiatives to drive social change," says Sr. María Torres Pérez, or Pepa Torres as people know her. "We have to raise our voices and gritar to denounce injustices."

Migration in the Americas was one of the conference's key topics because it is a fundamental pastoral need shared throughout the continent, said conference organizer and University of San Diego professor Victor Carmona. 

After she received letters from Hispanic inmates asking for spiritual materials in Spanish while in U.S. prisons and jails, Sr. Elsa Narváez Rodríguez in Boston began evangelizing to them by mail.

At an international migration conference held in Mexico City this month, Josephine Sr. María Magdalena Silva Rentería and fellow panelists shared the reality of the migration crisis as seen from Mexico's capital.

As co-director for leadership development of Strangers No Longer, Sr. Martha de la Torre Juárez creates circles of support and provides spiritual accompaniment to immigrant women in the state of Michigan.

"Accompanying the Indigenous people and listening to their dreams has been a reaffirmation of my vocation," says Sr. Zully Rojas Quispe, provincial of the Dominican Missionaries of the Rosary in Peru.

Out of zeal to protect children and the most vulnerable, Dominican Sr. Maria Valentina Rebollos Paragas has faced extraordinary hardships as a missionary in the Philippines, Australia and East Timor.

Sr. Geraldina Céspedes Ulloa, a Dominican Missionary of the Rosary, is dedicated to making a deeper connection between theology, equity, the socio-environmental crisis and the church's life. 

Since 2003, Sr. María de la Luz González Díaz has ministered to women and men working in the red light district of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. 

Sr. Sandra López García and her team minister to youth gang members unaffiliated with cartels. As part of their ministry, they regularly visit some of the gang members in six drug rehab centers across Monterrey, Mexico.

On the streets of Mexico, Catholic sisters and lay missionaries pay weekly visits to "chavos banda," youth gangs who are not affiliated with drug cartels. They offer direction and companionship to the young gang members.

Salesian sisters have taught immigrant children and teenagers in Monterrey, Mexico, to read and write through games, storytelling and outdoor activities for the past four years. 

The U.S.-Latin American Sister Exchange program, focused on mission and academic study, has so far benefited more than 60 Latin American exchange sisters, and is now open to Hispanic sisters already based in the U.S.

With an increase of migrants arriving at La Frontera, a shelter run by Catholic Charities in Laredo, Texas, Notre Dame sisters find ways to accommodate this influx as they recruit more volunteers.

The coordinator of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and Afro-Mexicans of the Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Catholic Bishops (CELAM) shares her experience accompanying Afro Mexican communities on the coast of Oaxaca and Guerrero.

Throughout her life as a Scalabrinian, Sr. Lidia Mara Silva de Souza has been entrusted with missions that have allowed her to meet migrants from all over Latin America, and also have made her a migrant herself.

The disappearances of relatives are a painful reality for many Mexican families. Benedictine Sr. Mariana Olivo Espinoza does pastoral work with such families in Torreón, Coahuila, one of Mexico's most violent cities.

Despite witnessing violence, inequality and poverty in Nuevo Laredo, Sr. Virginia Bahena works "to announce to the city how all men and women are sons and daughters of God, with the same dignity and rights."

More than 250 people from 59 U.S. Catholic charitable agencies participated in Catholic Charities USA's Applied Institute for Disaster Excellence training Dec. 5-9.

For the past 19 years, Sr. Gabriela Ramírez has had a special, personal ministry with the Indigenous Mayan communities that come from San Sebastián de Huehuetenango, Guatemala, and have settled in Alabama.