"To our people, land was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold."

GSR Today: Global Sisters Report is pleased to announce that Michele Morek, an Ursuline Sister of Mount St. Joseph and executive director of UNANIMA International, will join us Janusary 3 as liaison to sisters.

Growing up Christian and inundated with Scripture, it is difficult for me to recall verses from the Bible when needed. Passages such as: "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be worried, for I am your God" (Isaiah 4:10) or "When I am afraid I put my trust in you" (Psalm 56:3). As a Catholic, I believe that at Mass during the consecration, wine is transformed into the blood of Christ. Beyond that, however, rarely have I referred to the blood of Christ outside of a liturgical celebration.

Sr. Matthias Choi's congregation runs a village near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that provides housing, food and medical care for the elderly and abandoned, about 230 people that have nowhere else to go. "It's a refuge for people, like an oasis in the desert," says Choi.

A French bishop has opened the cause for canonization of a nun who claimed she saw a consecrated host turn to bloody flesh in the hands of a priest. Bishop Joseph de Metz-Noblat of Langres, France, initiated the sainthood cause of Mother Marie Adele Garnier, foundress of the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre OSB, or Tyburn Nuns, with a Dec. 3 Mass. 

"There are no dead ends in life unless we ourselves die in despair."

"Contemplation invites you to surrender the words that interpret our faith, our experience of God. It is a wordless prayer. It is a form of non-discursive meditation."

GSR Today - By most economic measures, Nigeria should be healthy. It has large oil revenues and has had strong growth in its agriculture, telecommunications and service sectors. And yet, as the CIA World Fact Book points out, more than 62 percent of the country's people live in extreme poverty.

In Bangui, Central African Republic, six Missionaries of Charity nuns run an orphanage for about 30 young girls up to the age of 18 who find themselves homeless and on the street. The girls can't return home because they have run away — or were chased away after they were accused of being witches. In this country, the significance accorded to superstitions concerning witchcraft and the supernatural is very high.

Driving through the streets of Albuquerque on the way to a memorial service for Sr. Paula Gonzalez, I felt strongly the presence of the many pioneer Sisters of Charity who ministered there since the days of the Wild West. The intrepid Sr. Blandina Segale, now Servant of God in the process of canonization, arranged for the establishment of the school in the plaza of Old Town, and the convent there still bears her name.