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.

The Nun in the World symposium - Religious life needs to be put in its proper historic context, said Congregation of Jesus Sr. Gemma Simmonds: The huge numbers of women religious in the 1950s were a spike never before seen in the history of the church – not the baseline by which things should be measured – and religious life is much more responsive and individual since the reforms of Vatican II.

The chapel of Divine Providence Hospital in El Salvador is one of the most visited places by local and foreign pilgrims. They come wishing to learn more about Archbishop Oscar Romero, the controversial archbishop who has become a Salvadoran icon. In 1966, the Congregation of the Carmelite Missionary Sisters of St. Therese built this hospital under the leadership of Sr. Luz Isabel Cuevas Santana, a Mexican missionary who saw the need to care for cancer patients. It was in the small chapel of the hospital that on March 24, 1980, Romero was killed, shot near his heart, just as he prepared to consecrate the host.

In the coming weeks, Pope Francis will release his new encyclical on the environment. Bloggers and pundits alike have been speculating on what exactly the pope will say, while social justice advocates are almost dancing in the streets, exuberant that the highest ranking official of the church is taking Catholic social teaching seriously.