GSR Today - Syrian refugees I have been talking to these past two weeks cautiously welcome the news that Russia plans to withdraw forces from their home country. Today marks an international #PrayForRefugees campaign on the fifth annivesary of the conflict.

"And when the dialogue is over and decisions or directions determined, the last requirement to be fulfilled is that of letting go."

GSR Today - Since 1994, when 65 religious women gathered to share their emerging environmental dreams with one another, Sisters of Earth has expanded; their next gathering concentrates on indigenous wisdom and four women who are standing up against the effects of extractive industries.

Sr. Orla Treacy of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as the Loreto Sisters, from the Irish town of Bray in County Wicklow is the principal of Loreto Secondary School in Rumbek in Lakes State, considered the premier girls' school in South Sudan.

"The great contract in literature is this: you tell me your story and somehow I get my story." - Patricia Hempl . . . In this spirit I begin. At the psychiatrist's office a devoted daughter thinks to leave trouble behind and take her frail father across the border to a peaceful place. At a Texas border shelter, a Sister puts an indigenous Guatemalan woman and her son on a Greyhound bus destined for Ohio and safety.

"If I am indeed called upon to speak as a moral authority, I know that what I say will be rooted in the real lives of so many people I know and love. My life commitment binds me inextricably to all of humankind and the rest of Creation. What a humbling and demanding privilege."

While some consider life's work is finished by the biblical age of 70 or 80, the lives and ministries of many women religious suggest otherwise. Unlike most persons in ministry, sisters never truly retire from active apostolate. Their resilience calls to mind the biblical observation, "In old age they still produce fruits" because they are "planted in the house of the Lord" (Psalm 92:13-14).

These days, Sr. Adelia Contini sees more Mexicans fleeing north toward the U.S. than she does families from Honduras, El Salvador and other violence-plagued regions of Central America. "We're seeing a lot of people from Michoacan and Guerrero," said Contini, 70, director of Instituto Madre Assunta, a shelter for migrant women and children in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, operated by nuns with the order of Missionnaires de San Carlos Borromeo Scalabrinians.

GSR Today - I had the distinct pleasure of spending an evening with the Adrian Dominicans last week, and, as always happens when I spend time with Catholic sisters, I found myself feeling a bit jealous on the drive home.

A new social media campaign developed by Sisters United News is designed to help remind people of that fact. A group of 12 Midwest communities, known collectively as the Catholic Sisters of the Upper Mississippi River Valley, planned to use the campaign to celebrate National Catholic Sisters Week, observed March 8-14 this year.