“I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.”

GSR Today - Women religious leaders representing 29 regions of the world and 80 percent of religious worldwide gathered recently outside Rome with the goal of finding common issues that they could address together, believing that global solidarity is the way forward to making significant changes in systems of society and the church.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - If you choose to do something risky and then pray for safety, does that equate to testing God?

Three Stats and a Map - After several years of work, last week the Pew Research Center released its projections for the future of world religions. Researchers analyzed data from 2,500 sources to predict what the populations of various religious groups might look like in the next three decades.

The legacy of uranium mining leaves New Mexicans with 500 abandoned uranium mines, homes built with contaminated mine-waste rock and contaminated water wells even as companies seek new permits to mine. In New Mexico we also face an escalating oil and gas industry, hydro fracking, pipelines and various other mines.

"Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion."

GSR Today - Easter is my favorite holiday for many reasons, but one of the most conspicuous are the Bible and Jesus specials that take over cable television before Easter Sunday. They’re almost always the worst – the cheesy reenactments and questionable theology are cringe-worthy – still, I cannot get enough of them.

It is Holy Thursday, a day when practicing Catholics (very practicing Catholics) yearn to be in their own parish, their own Motherhouse, their own Newman Center. For older folks, the strains of “Pange Lingua” rise from the past. For younger members, “Jerusalem My Destiny” may evoke similar grace. For all these believers a certain mystical sense of Holy Thursday penetrates the day – the practical mysticism of the washing of the feet, the drying of the feet, and for Pope Francis, the kissing of the feet. It is nourishment, communion and the overwhelming experience of the ritual.

I belong to a small community of contemplative religious women, Poor Clare Nuns, also known as the Sisters of St. Clare. In 1991, the late Bishop of Saginaw, Ken Untener, invited four of us to leave our home monastery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and come to Saginaw, Michigan, where in the spirit of St. Clare we could be a praying community sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the healing power of prayer with others. The question that we are most frequently asked is, “What is contemplative prayer?”

Nestled beside St. Agnes Church and School, the Carmelite Monastery blends into the brick facades that line a busy stretch of Newburg Road in Louisville. Carpooling families and dwellers of the Highlands area zip by at all hours rushing from one commitment to the next. In contrast, behind the monastery's pale orange bricks, eight women religious – members of the Order of Discalced Carmelites – have only one commitment. They live a quiet, intense life of prayer in the tradition of St. Teresa of Avila, the 16th-century Spanish mystic and doctor of the church.