Monday Starter

Monday Starter is a biweekly feature from Global Sisters Report staff writers that rounds up news from or about women religious.

nuns pray

Monday Starter: Salesian Sisters leader appointed to Vatican dicastery

By Matters India, UCA News, Chris Herlinger
Global Sisters Report will host an online health care forum on mental wellness for sisters July 1. (GSR screenshot)

Monday Starter: GSR to host July 1 mental wellness forum for sisters

By Chris Herlinger
From left: Bon Secours Srs. Pat Dowling, Elaine Davia and Nancy Glynn stand beside an ad reading, "Put the Guns Down. Let Peace Begin with Us," inside a Baltimore city bus. The ad campaign runs through June on the outside and inside of city buses, and on Baltimore's subway. (Courtesy of Sisters of Bon Secours)

Monday Starter: 8 congregations launch 'Put the Guns Down' campaign in Baltimore

By Chris Herlinger
In a proposal unveiled May 11, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are working on a massive $4.5 trillion package of tax cuts. To partially offset that loss of revenue, they propose $880 billion in cuts, mostly to Medicaid. (OSV News/Reuters/Dado Ruvic)

Monday Starter: Catholic Health Association denounces Trump's Medicaid cuts

By Dan Stockman
Sr. Elizabeth Niamat (second row, third from right) on May 31, 2024, in Rome. (Courtesy Elizabeth Niamat)

Monday Starter: Pakistani nuns turn to music, social media to mourn Pope Francis

By Dan Stockman, Kamran Chaudhry
The Spanish Mission style buildings on the Victory Noll campus in Huntington, Indiana, have been sold to the county community corrections program for its drug court program aimed at getting drug addicts treatment instead of jail terms. (GSR/Dan Stockman)

Monday Starter: 4 communities join Land Justice Futures effort

By Chris Herlinger, Dan Stockman, UCA News
Migrants look through the border fence Sept. 12, 2023, toward food brought by aid workers after gathering between the primary and secondary border fences at the U.S.-Mexico border to wait for processing by U.S immigration officials in San Diego. (OSV News/Reuters/Mike Blake)

Monday Starter: Trump ends funding for legal services for migrant children

By Dan Stockman, Brian Roewe
Students gather outside Don Bosco Ngozi High School in Burundi. (Courtesy of ANS Agenzia Info Salesiana)

Monday Starter: Salesians mark UN's World Water Day

By Chris Herlinger
Antonio M. Lagdameo, the permanent representative of the Philippines to the United Nations and chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in 2024, pictured at the podium and upper part of screens addressing the opening of the 68th session of the CSW in March 2024.

Monday Starter: CSW meetings to focus on 30 years since Beijing Declaration

By Chris Herlinger
The Sisters of Humility of Mary will sponsor three billboards like the one in this photo from March 8-14, 2025, in Pennsylvania, hoping that those who see it will reflect on the words of the Gospel according to St. Matthew: "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me." (GSR screenshot/Courtesy of Sisters of Humility)

Monday Starter: Using billboards, Pennsylvania sisters highlight Gospel's words on migrants

By Rhina Guidos
Women religious are pictured in a file photo entering a church in Abuja, Nigeria. (OSV News/Reuters/Afolabi Sotunde)

Monday Starter: Tracker adds Nigeria, Chad to countries where women face crises

By Dan Stockman, Chris Herlinger
U.S. President Joe Biden walks to deliver remarks on the election results and the upcoming presidential transition of power, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington Nov. 7, 2024. His speech took place the day after Republican President-elect Donald Trump was declared to have been elected the 47th president of the United States. (OSV News/Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz)

Monday Starter: St. Joseph Sisters ask Biden to end term with care for immigrants

By Dan Stockman
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at the Brookings Institution Dec. 10 in Washington. (OSV News/Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

Monday Starter: Advocates urge Biden to support debt relief measure

By Chris Herlinger
Pope Francis poses with a group of women before a session of the 16th general assembly of the synod of bishops in the Paul VI Hall at The Vatican, Oct. 28, 2023. The seventh from left is Sr. Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary in the Vatican's Synod of Bishops. (AP/Alessandra Tarantino)

Monday Starter: Be patient with the synodal process, say religious synod participants

By Chris Herlinger
Pope Francis greets Sister Chantal Desmarais, a member of the Sisters of Charity of St. Mary and a synod delegate from Canada, in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Oct. 4. (CNS/Vatican Media)

Monday Starter: Sisters praise synod on synodality as a prophetic moment

By Chris Herlinger
Auxiliary Bishop Ludger Schepers, left, of the Diocese of Essen, Germany, poses for a photo with Sr. Lorena Jenal, to his right, Rakieta Poyga, of Burkina Faso, and Gregor von Fürstenberg, vice president of Missio Aachen, Oct. 13, 2024 during an awards ceremony in Germany. Jenal received a lifetime achievement award from Missio Aachen for her ministry among victims of "sorcery accusation related violence" in Papua New Guinea. (Courtesy of Missio Aachen)

Monday Starter: Franciscan sister receives award for battling sorcery-related violence

By Rhina Guidos, Stephan Uttom Rozario
Nuns from the Catholic Health Association of India undertake a blind walk in Bengaluru, India, to spread awareness on eye donation and eye care. (Courtesy of Catholic Health Association of India)

Monday Starter: Sisters join blind walk to promote eyesight protection

By Thomas Scaria, Dan Stockman
Advocates from sister congregations and peace groups concerned about arms trafficking into Haiti gather outside U.S. Senate office buildings Sept. 27.

Monday Starter: Sisters seek federal action to curb US arms trafficking into Haiti

By Dan Stockman, Chris Herlinger
A group of children cool off in a plastic pool donated by California nonprofit Border Compassion to the Cobina Posada del Migrante shelter in Mexicali, Mexico, where temperatures reached 120 degrees July 8. The nonprofit, founded by Sr. Suzanne Jabro, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, organized a hot weather fund this summer to purchase plastic pools, popsicles, fruit and transportation to cooler venues for those at the shelter, which has no air conditioning.

Monday Starter: Sisters help children at the border find respite from the heat

By Rhina Guidos

Monday Starter: New film dramatizes life of founder of Apostles congregation

By Chris Herlinger, Dan Stockman