The Leadership Conference of Women Religious membership on Friday morning voted to adopt a resolution that commits member congregations to addressing systemic causes of injustice. While the resolution itself is broad, the focus of the resolution presentation, unquestionably, was immigration and the detention of women and children seeking asylum.

Sr. Janet Mock said it is not she, but those around her who deserve accolades. “I have no illusions — everything I learned about leadership, I learned from you and your predecessors,” she told the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’ annual assembly after accepting the group’s Outstanding Leadership Award at their banquet Friday evening. LCWR officials said Mock not only provided extraordinary leadership as their executive director, but did it “through one of the conference’s most profound and transformative challenges — the doctrinal assessment of LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and its subsequent mandate.”

GSR Today - The LCWR annual assembly last week in Houston was upbeat and produced a number of stories. Use this link to access all of Global Sisters Report's coverage. Click here for a quick list of all the LCWR 2015 assembly stories, or click into this post for more options, including our Storify collection of tweets from the assembly.

GSR Today - Not all of the activity at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious' annual assembly is worthy of a separate news story. Still, your GSR reporting team is here from gavel to gavel, and we know our readers are following along with great interest, so here's a wrap-up of some of the things that didn't make the big headlines at the conference.

Sr. Mary Pellegrino, a Sister of St. Joseph, was installed Friday as the president-elect of the nation’s largest leadership group for women religious, LCWR, which is closing its annual assembly this evening (Aug. 14). In Pellegrino's candidate materials, she said the critical issues for LCWR in the next three years are to remain both learners and leaders while discerning the most appropriate use of the group’s moral authority. She also said LCWR needs to continue to integrate the contemplative process into all the organization’s work.

Wednesday’s psalm antiphon (Psalm 66) proclaims what my heart feels after attending the Giving Voice National Conference in Kansas City last weekend. The theme “Crossing Boundaries in Religious Life,” took shape through the more than seventy sisters under the age of 50 who gathered. Srs. Tere Maya and Sophia Park gave us much to ponder in their keynote addresses. Speaking about the generational and cultural dynamics at work in the church and in religious life today, they named realities that both affirm and challenge me as a young sister. The honest conversations were powerful kindling for the flame inside of me. Let me pass on some of that honesty.

Notes from the Field - I’ve known since taking my seat on the 32-hour journey to Nong Khai, and even before, that there would be another eerily similar flight lurking in the future. The difference would be that the next flight would be heading back to the United States, and at the time it seemed light years away.

The church does not have a mission — rather, God's mission has a church, a priest told a gathering of women religious Thursday morning. Divine Word Fr. Stephen Bevans told approximately 800 members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious gathered here for the group's annual assembly that only by focusing on the Holy Spirit can they quench the thirsts of the world. To live God's mission, Bevans said, the church must live in what he called "prophetic dialogue."

“We speak of the great deep as a reserve of wisdom that we believe can be accessed by living a life of contemplation.”

See for Yourself - The public television station in the community where I live recently celebrated the 48th anniversary of its annual on-air auction to raise funds for programming. A key success factor each year is the army of volunteers who augment the event's nightly experience during the entire auction week.