Declaring four 19th-century women religious saints, Pope Francis said they are models for all Christians of how faith, nourished in prayer, is expressed concretely in acts of charity and the promotion of unity. The new saints, proclaimed during a Mass May 17 in St. Peter's Square, included two Palestinians – Sts. Marie-Alphonsine, founder of the Rosary Sisters, and Mary of Jesus Crucified, a Melkite Carmelite – as well as French St. Jeanne Emilie de Villeneuve and Italian St. Maria Cristina Brando.

It’s been a month since the Vatican quietly ended its controversial oversight of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. With no press conference and little fanfare, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and LCWR issued a joint statement on April 16 announcing the fulfillment of the 2012 mandate for LCWR reform. And then they went silent.
Additional coverage: Q & A with Sr. Sharon Holland; LCWR evaluates end of mandate by GSR • LCWR statements about doctrinal assessment, 2009-2015 • Timeline of LCWR / CDF interactions 2008-present by NCR

“My actions are my only true belongings.”

The end of the controversial Vatican oversight of the main leadership group of U.S. Catholic sisters was not the result of a particular change in discussions between the women and church prelates but of a three-year growth of "mutual understanding and communion," the leader of the sisters' group has said.

Speaking quietly and deliberately, Dominican Sr. Diana Momeka from Iraq urged a congressional committee hearing May 13 to help the displaced Christian refugees in Iraq to "go back home." "We want nothing more than to go back to our lives; we want nothing more than to go home," Momeka, a Dominican Sister of St. Catherine of Siena of Mosul, Iraq, told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. During the hearing: "Ancient Communities Under Attack: ISIS's War on Religious Minorities," Momeka was one of four women who spoke of the urgent need to not only help and protect religious minorities but also to preserve and save religious sites.

As part of the Loretto Committee for Peace I attended the Peace & Planet people’s mobilization weekend April 24-25 and the first few days of the U.N. Review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Since 1978 the Loretto Community, sisters and co-members, has formally opposed the production and use of nuclear weapons – even as deterrence. Our committee is proposing to our Loretto Assembly this summer that we call for the U.S. to unilaterally disarm all nuclear weapons.

GSR Today - If the complete destruction of the earthquake tested people's faith in Nepal, you’d never know it from the faith-based organizations rushing to help.

The history of black women religious in the United States is replete with shocking examples of racism, racial segregation and marginalization, perpetuated by their white religious leaders and peers. At their peak around 1965, there were about 1,000 African-American sisters, but there are only about 300 today.

It was the smallest funeral I had ever been to. The congregation totaled six, eight if you counted the priest and the acolyte. There was no body or cremains to mark the memorial; no holy cards; no flower arrangements. The details came to me on short notice. A gentleman called me Monday night and left a message on my cell phone. “Sister, I just got word from Joe’s family that the memorial Mass will be tomorrow morning at 11 at Holy Family Church.”