COP21 Paris - French leaders here Dec. 9 released a new, slimmed-down version of a draft agreement to inch negotiations forward toward a global deal to address climate change.

COP21 Paris - For most people climate change is a scientific abstraction posing a distant threat. "It's in the Arctic or distant in time," said Dan Price, an English climate scientist in his 20s, speaking in the "green" Climate Generations area adjacent to the official "blue" area where the COP21 climate negotiations are taking place.

"Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are specific to their species or kind and appropriate for their role and function within the communities within which they exist."

From A Nun's Life podcasts - What's your favorite Scripture passage for Advent?

Notes from the Field - The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences has a Farm Labor Supervisor Training Program that provides training in English and Spanish to farmworkers and others in the farming industry. After only a week, I have already learned an abundant amount of information about daily farm operations.

A delegation of 116 women religious from 35 different congregations, the daughter of the U.S. Ambassador Robert White, relatives of the sisters and Jean Donovan, and other lay and ecumenical leaders traveled to El Salvador to commemorate the 35th anniversary of these martyrs. Our mission: to celebrate the lives and ministry of our sisters, to renew our commitment to the people of El Salvador and to call for an investigation into their deaths as a vital step toward ending the culture of violence and impunity that plagues El Salvador to this day.

From NCR - Three Syrian families may spend Christmas in Texas detention centers after immigration officials denied their parole request last week. The decision angered immigration advocates who called on the Obama administration to release the refugee families saying it violates a federal court ruling.

Geraldine Kearney, a Sister of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St. Benedict, has spent the last several years educating people in Australia and throughout the world about the impacts of climate change on low-lying islands in the Pacific.

COP21 Paris - Negotiations toward a global climate treaty have ebbed and flowed here, according to several U.S. sisters observing the proceedings at the Paris climate talks. Still, they sense a deal to emerge, in part due to the host country.

"Social and political charity is not exhausted in relationships between individuals but spreads into the network formed by these relationships, which is precisely the social and political community; it intervenes in this context seeking the greatest good for the community in its entirety."