Dr. Sr. Mary Virginia Annel works to prevent the proliferation of HIV/AIDS in a tiny Central American country that is still rebounding from a 12-year civil war that took 75,000 lives. Beginning as an Archdiocesan team, now a non-profit foundation, Annel’s group grew to number 20 social workers, communicators, pastoral accompaniers of the afflicted and 250 volunteers. Soon CONTRASIDA was reaching 40,000 people a year with classes, literature and workshops for teachers and others who might “multiply” correct information.

GSR Today - There have been numerous reports about the issues of detaining families who fled violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to seek asylum in the United States, from how they’re often deported before they get the hearing American law says they are entitled to, to how they’re being held in what critics say is essentially a prison. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit hoping to stop the process.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - What if I'm so influenced by other people's ideas about my life that I don't hear God's voice? 

"O Rising Sun, send your healing rays of love into our lives."

I was in the wake of the season of El Día de Los Muertos when I attended the Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe conference at Yale Divinity School, Nov. 7-9. When Sr. Miriam Therese McGillis, who was on a panel for Seeds, Food and Soil, brought forth baskets of drying marigolds to share with participants I was very moved and surprised. Miriam and the marigolds captured participants through her intimate sharing of her spiritual journey to embrace the sacred word of the book of nature at the tutelage of Fr. Thomas Berry.

It could be the scene of an ordinary school day anywhere. Just a few days before Christmas, the younger students were making decorations and singing carols downstairs, while the older ones were taking their final exams upstairs. But for the Syrian refugee children at the Good Shepherd Social Center in Deir al-Ahmar, getting an education is something many of their young compatriots are missing. "It started with a storm," said Good Shepherd Sr. Micheline Lattouf, who heads the center

GSR Today - I’ll give you three guesses for naming the No. 1 mainstream media story this week concerning women religious. Actually, you don’t even need three. The Vatican’s report on the apostolic visitation released Tuesday accounted for most of this week’s news about nuns and merited the same type of headlines from the mainstream media that it did from the non-secular press.

That first Sunday night it appeared. In the stillness of the final day of November it had taken its place, where it was to remain for the coming four weeks of Advent. There in the chapel, a tiny manger had appeared. No wise men, no family, not even any animals. Simply, a manger.

Commentary - So much has already been said about the content of the report from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. I want to delve a bit below the surface of both the process and the text itself to engage what I think are some of the deeper issues and concerns and hopes that invite and challenge us for the future.