"I know God is with me on this journey, so I have no fear."

From A Nun's Life podcasts – Sylvania Franciscan Sr. Shannon Shrein reflects on the story of the Samaritan woman at the well and how faith can free us.

I am a student of Dante Alighieri. His insights about the destructive power of factionalism came home to me recently at a family meal.

Sr. Jisha Jiya is the first Catholic woman religious in India to direct and produce a feature film. The 39-year-old Medical Sister of St. Joseph made the film "Ente Vellithooval" ("My Silver Feather") in Malayalam, the language of the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Recovery resources - These four accredited institutions in U.S. and Canada have a particular focus on working with men and women in religious orders as well as Catholic clergy on mental health and addiction disorders.

Sr. Rose Celeste O'Connell was once largely successful in hiding a secret: She liked to drink. A lot. "It was difficult to admit that you weren't the perfect religious, that you might have something wrong." Her recovery began in 1982 and has included ministry to other addicts.

Public accounts of mental illness and addictions among sisters have been rare, as have details of treatment and recovery. That may be because of the pervasive shame those illnesses can elicit, as well as a historical tendency for those who struggle with them to be directed only to spend more time in solitary prayer. But that is changing as knowledge and attitudes about mental illness evolve.

"Let us then pursue what leads to peace and to building up one another."

National Catholic Sisters Week and its sibling program, SisterStory, are now joined by an effort to engage young Latina women, a diocesan outreach program, and a curriculum-development project under one U.S. umbrella, the National Catholic Sisters Project.

"The most destructive cultural conditions for a woman to be born into and to live under are those that insist on obedience without consultation with one's soul."