Days after a Texas judge ruled that a state agency cannot issue day-care licenses to two immigration detention centers, attorneys and advocates for asylum seekers acted to ensure the decision withstands challenges. Activists and volunteers are hopeful it signals a change in U.S. immigration policy and practice. The ruling is the latest in a series of salvos that have pitted the Texas Department of Family Protective Services and companies operating the detention centers against attorneys and advocates for detainees.

It is usually the week before Christmas in the season of Advent that I have the opportunity to pray and walk in a traditional procession with others, re-enacting Mary and Joseph seeking shelter for the time when their child would be born. "Posada" in Spanish means "inn." This seeking shelter, safety, security is expressed by the word "posada."

"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.