On April 5, on what would have been Sr. Anne E. Patrick's 77th birthday, a group of friends and fellow scholars gathered to honor the distinguished feminist scholar and Sister of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary who had died July 21, 2016.

Few Catholic sisters have claimed the media spotlight recently quite like Sr. Jean Dolores Schmidt, the 98-year-old chaplain of the Loyola University Chicago men's basketball team. Global Sisters Report is talking to her after all of that about her role for the team and for all the students at Loyola.

"Fence railing, worn and nailed, weathered by the experience of being joined as one. What holds us together ready to change?"

Catholic women religious at the United Nations are decrying the use of apparent use of chemical weapons by Syria against civilians, including children, while warning that the airstrikes carried out April 14 by the United States and some of its allies in response could bring more retaliation.

Simply Spirit - I was recently re-inspired by some young sisters, who place their confidence not in the human institutions that have served the church in the past but in the God who summons them to serve in new ways in the future.

In However Long the Night: Making Meaning in a Time of Crisis, sisters recount how they navigated their organization through the doctrinal assessment to an amicable resolution with the Vatican and share lessons for communal discernment and collective decision-making in times of conflict.

Direct action is just one part of any campaign. Legislative lobbying, op-ed columns and careful essays like Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" all work together to gain the prize.

"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?