Photo essay - 'For love of Mother Mary': At Vietnam's Marian Congress, sisters offer health care to pilgrims who fell ill, help clean the shrine, give prayerful and cultural performances, serve at the Eucharist procession, sell Catholic items and record prayer requests.

Though I'm no longer tied to the school schedule, this season always feels like something wonderful is finishing, and something new is beginning -- yet to be revealed as wonderful, joyous, painful or scary -- but certain to demand much in terms of my energy and time.

See for Yourself - I email a few folks and get the "out of office until ..." messages. Great -- he or she is taking time away. But wait -- why am I receiving an email directly from Miss Vacation?

"As in the early church, and in religious communities, we gather, pray, reflect, listen and go out into the world as the hands of Christ. This is the truth — we are needed today!"

At a recent town hall meeting broadcast on CNN, Sinsinawa Dominican Sr. Erica Jordan got to ask Speaker Paul Ryan how his policies match up to Catholic social teaching. She found his answer patronizing and shares with Global Sisters Report what she would have said next if given the chance.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - A listener poses a question on behalf of a friend who loves religious life but feels guilty for disobeying her parents, who disapprove of her choice to follow God's will.

Nearly one year after the killings of Sr. Paula Merrill of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and Sr. Margaret Held of the School Sisters of St. Francis, the sisters' congregations and loved ones continue to carry on. "Our individual and community grief flowed in and out of each other," Sr. Susan Gatz, president of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, wrote. "Our minds scrambled to make sense of it ... no use. Our hearts ached."

Williams, the company building the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline extension, had sued the Adorers of the Blood of Christ sisters for immediate seizure of their land to prevent construction of a chapel in the path of the planned pipeline.

"We are the church, the hands of Christ, a group of disciples who take up their crosses daily and head off into the world to continue Christ's mission."

As the Lebanese army wages an offensive against an Islamic State enclave near the border of Syria, Lebanese civilians — Christian and Muslim — are working side by side, not far from the frontlines, to feed some 5,000 soldiers.