Outside the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Juárez, Mexico, women passed around a microphone before a large group of spectators Feb. 16 to recount firsthand experiences with — or as — migrants and the labor movement. Many people from the original 100-Mile pilgrimage in September reunited as about 40 women walked three miles carrying the same message as they crossed the bridge connecting El Paso, Texas, to Ciudad Juárez.

For women religious working within the United Nations, 2016 is shaping up as a year to press forward to achieve the hard-fought goals set out in 2015. Last year was marked by vision and good intentions. The 193 U.N.-member states agreed to a new set of development goals to reduce poverty and protect the environment, and also shepherded a climate change agreement to help reduce the levels of global greenhouse emissions.

"We are ever in between what is and what is yet to be. Let us believe in the crossing."

Notes from the Field - Immokalee is a place where everyone is willing to help each other, which creates this sense of community. This has certainly been proven by all of the organizations I have visited whose main concerns are the farmworkers and their families.

Everything is in flux and there are no definitive answers to these fundamental questions at this in-between time. I once had ready replies to who I was in ministry, community, and family.

"May it open our hearts to the conversion we need to transform our current paradigm."

GSR Today - For the last several months, I've been eyeballs deep in research on the United States’ criminal justice system. I've been reading books, scouring through legislation and talking to as many Catholic sisters as I can who have ministries dealing with inmates or men and women formerly incarcerated.

For those of us ministering at Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation on Chicago's South Side, Pope Francis' declaration of a Year of Mercy for 2016 was a welcome panacea. Last year Chicago mourned the deaths of 468 people who were murdered. Our city had more homicides in 2015 than any other U.S. city, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Philip Gain is a prominent author, journalist, and human rights and environmental activist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He heads the Society for Environment and Human Development, known as SEHD, an advocacy group whose mission is focused on "human rights and environmental justice in Bangladesh through research, capacity building and advocacy."

I first saw the child in the Detroit Free Press as the news was breaking regarding the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. His face wouldn't leave me. I placed his picture where I pray so I could contemplate it. Then the February 1 issue of TIME magazine had that picture on its cover. His face with the caption —The Poisoning of an American City — has become an icon to me of what happens when we forget the human connections with nature and make economics the highest priority in decision making.