For more than 15 years, St. Joseph Sr. Judy Blake has helped the poor in Flint, Michigan, as co-founder of the St. Luke N.E.W. Life Center in 2000, where she is co-director. The center provides meals, a food pantry, literacy classes and job training, serving about 3,000 clients a month. Now Blake is helping the center's clients cope with another disaster as the city of Flint's water crisis grows.

Professional pilgrimage planners and those who regularly receive or accompany pilgrims set off on their own Year of Mercy pilgrimage in late January. Most had experience working with pilgrims to Lourdes, Fatima, the Vatican and World Youth Days. But one had a unique experience: St. Joseph Sr. Helen Prejean says she is a constant pilgrim to the "holy land" of the human dignity and pain of society's most despised members.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - "Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit." Choosing a new name is part of the confimation sacrament, and it can be one of personal, as well as spiritual, significance.

"They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in."

We live in an information age where many of us are constantly plugged in. Technology that fits in my pocket can instantly connect me to loved ones or strangers. My smartphone alerts me to child abductions in my local area, while events thousands of miles away, such as hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and mass migration, unfold before my eyes almost in real time. What does it do to the human psyche and the spirit, I wonder, to regularly witness images of suffering, death and destruction from within our safe and comfortable homes, and then go about our daily lives?

See for Yourself - As I was leaving a store recently, an older man who had been out in the cold for a while approached and held in front of me this green pen with a paper attached.

Traditionally the third week of January (January 18-25) is devoted to prayers for Christian unity. For over 100 years the World Prayer for Christian Unity has invited Christian denominations of every stripe to pray for closer union. Not long ago, I found myself longing for the day when our prayers will finally lead to Eucharistic table sharing. Here's the story.

Augustinian Sr. Julia Thundathil bemoans that Indian society still cannot accept leprosy patients or their children, "despite the fact that it is a curable disease," she says. "People still look at them with contempt. It should change." For more than two decades, she has seen to the needs of 258 lepers from 85 families who live in an enclave she helps manage called Harsha Nagar in a village in central India.

"We do not remember to stay in the past. Rather, we remember for the present and — for the future."

Sr. Imelda Gaurwa was the first Tanzanian sister to join the international order of the Grail Sisters. She was the country superior for many years but has now retired in Moshi, Tanzania, where the Grail Sisters run a nursery school and a vocational school. Gaurwa talked with GSR about the importance of empowering women and how that message has adapted to new realities in Tanzania, where there are 80 Grail Sisters across the country.