Benedictine Srs. Carol Ann McLaughlin and Rita Groner take their 13-year-old miniature poodle, Rusty, to various places in Erie, Pennsylvania, to provide therapy. They visit nursing homes, schools, hospitals — wherever they are needed. McLaughlin and Groner adopted Rusty from a friend who had fostered him. When they visited the then-4-year-old dog, he jumped right into their laps, McLaughlin said.

Lovers of the Holy Cross of Thu Thiem sisters have challenged the government ownership of their former education facilities in a developing riverside district of Ho Chi Minh City after they staged a rare prayer protest Oct. 22-44 against destruction of their property.

I have done justice training with the project staff in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2013, so I was anticipating the release of the video "Maisha: A New Life Outside the Mines." I was told it was a documentary of the work of the Good Shepherd ministry being done there. And so it is — and quite a good documentary at that.

Notes from the Field - After graduating from college in the spring of 2015, my husband, Ian, and I moved from Michigan to Kermit, West Virginia, to live and work at the Big Laurel Learning Center where we both help Sr. Kathy O'Hagan and Sr. Gretchen Shaffer explore ways to make it more sustainable by helping to host various work groups throughout the year.

GSR Today - Right now, Missouri executes death row inmates faster than any other state — reportedly about one inmate a month, outpacing even Texas’ per capita execution rate. Last week, prominent death penalty opponent St. Joseph Sr. Helen Prejean was in Kansas City to discuss Missouri’s capital punishment situation. 

Sr. Elizabeth Tran Thi Quynh Giao, former provincial superior of Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Vietnam, has spent more than 15 years training and building the Apostolic Institute of the Annunciation. The institute aims to give chances to poor, uneducated women in northern Vietnam so they can become nuns and serve other people. It was founded by the late Cardinal Archbishop Paul Joseph Pham Dinh Tung of Hanoi when Vietnam started to open its doors to the outside world and ease its religious policies.

"Religious vocation is a gift from God, and God always calls, faithfully and constantly. The crisis of religious life is not a decrease in vocation. Rather, the crisis of religious life is that we do not know how to receive God’s gift."

Twenty years ago I was in a small group visiting with geologian Thomas Berry. We got to talking about the deplorable state of the planet. Our stories, statistics and images of widespread destruction, abject poverty, species loss and war piled high on the table around which we crowded. Many heavy sighs. “It’s hard not to despair,” someone said. I nodded slowly. Thomas cut in: “Despair is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”      

"Bless the waters that quench the thirst of the land. Bless the people who suffer raging storms. Bless those who use water wisely tending the future."