"The hostel aims to give opportunities for ethnic students to study well at schools in the city," said Sr. Mary Nguyen Thi Thuan, head of the hostel, which is run by Mary Queen of Peace sisters in Buon Ma Thuot City. St. Teresa Hostel provides free accommodation, food, health care and education to first- through 12th-graders from remote villages in Vietnam's Central Highlands.

"Everyday experience and scientific research shows that the greatest effects of all attacks on the environment are suffered by the poorest."

Community is a gift that continues to amaze (and challenge) me. How is it, I sometimes wonder, that God managed to break through my self-imposed barriers and brought me to this particular group of women seeking God's gift of peace, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace? 

See for Yourself - Sure, you can get married in the middle of the night in Las Vegas, but there are things to watch out for. You can even plan a more conventional, less spontaneous one, if you want.

"I look into a sunflower and see earth, rows and rows of leaves, each one a person remembered, quivering, beautiful. The whole earth lies in a sunflower. A morning offering lifted like a host."

"It's really just listening to the Spirit's invitation. None of it was ever planned."

Speakers at the "Daughters of Wisdom: Women and Leadership in the Global Church" conference at DePaul University in Chicago are themselves evidence of women already exercising leadership in academia, religious life, and social and environmental justice organizations around the world. "We are very powerful," said Sr. Rosemary Nyirumbe. "The truth is that without women, the church cannot stand."

Mother Mary McGreevy is serving her second term as chairperson of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. The major superior of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan, McGreevy spoke with GSR about her life, her leadership style and the future of CMSWR.

At an event to draw attention to the work of Catholic sisters in the world's most dangerous regions, Sr. Patricia Murray, executive director of the International Union of Superiors General, said women religious are "radically committed to incarnating the Gospel here and now, living the beatitudes and bringing the love of God to ever-new frontiers."

Notes from the Field - Some of my most memorable journeys in Haiti have been accompanying visiting medical mission teams as a translator into the rural countryside of Gros Morne county.