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.”

In a statement released this morning, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious acknowledged the sadness and public humiliation they experienced during the six years they were under Vatican review, but they said they hoped the process would be a valuable learning experience for both the wider church and community.
 

"Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever."

Three Stats and a Map - In April, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network published the third edition of its World Happiness Report, which – just like the name suggests – is a ranking of all the countries in the world by happiness. The experts behind the report assess nations in categories such as economics, psychology, health and public policy to determine the state’s overall happiness.

When the shooting stops, it's eerily silent in Malakal. The quarter million people who once lived here have dispersed to other cities or countries, or to the nearby U.N. base where they live behind barbed wire and heavily armed blue-helmeted soldiers, or to simply living in the bush, trying to stay out of the path of the several armed groups ravaging the countryside. Yet amid the silence a small voice once again speaks. The "Voice of Love" radio station is part of the Catholic Radio Network. The Malakal station – which is also heard in the war-torn Nuba Mountains of Sudan – stays on the air because Italian Comboni Sr. Elena Balatti refuses to let it be quieted.

In less than three weeks after a massive earthquake killed more than 8,000 people in Nepal, a 7.3-magnitude quake struck May 11 near the Mt. Everest region, destroying infrastructure and buildings in a country that was just beginning to pick up the pieces. “It was just like the first one,” Sr. Taskila Nicholas, Good Shepherd Sister working in Kathmandu, told Global Sisters Report by phone.

GSR Today - It’s not every day that a Catholic sister trends on Twitter, but yesterday, millions of tweets had Congregation of St. Joseph Sr. Helen Prejean on the trending list after she was called to testify on behalf of the defense in convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s death penalty trial. Prejean’s appearance at the trial wasn’t entirely unexpected.

"They are glow-worms of faith, illuminating the night."

Last month I returned from my first visit to India. I was invited to lead a week's workshop on “Earth Democracy: Defending the Rights of People and Mother Earth” with Dr. Vandana Shiva and her sister Dr. Mira Shiva, a physician and leader in public health. The course took place at the Navdanya Biodiversity Learning Center at Bija Vidapeeth University in Dehradun, India.

Sr. Clara Animottil’s mission is to put smiles on the faces of children found homeless and loitering around railway platforms. After fighting systemic corruption among local railway officials and police, she now operates two centers where nearly 80 children who were formerly living on the streets and being exploited have a home. Since 2000 she and her staff have reunited thousands of orphaned or runaway children with their families.