GSR Today - Ursuline Sr. Mary Walter Santer was my personal mentor and translator on my journeys to Asia, where she served as a missionary and in leadership for 56 years tirelessly to promote partnership between religious women, men and bishops.

Three Stats and a Map - Saturday marks the third annual International Day of the Girl Child, and this year’s theme is “Empowering Adolescent Girls: Ending the Cycle of Violence.” According to the World Health Organization, 35 percent of women worldwide have been the victim of gender-based violence.

In the chaos of a developing disaster in an impoverished country, the women religious and Catholic organizations were at the forefront of organizing a response in Liberia. “We live here, we’re from here, I’ve been here for 36 years,” said Sr. Barbara Brillant of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. “I think that’s why people look to churches. Churches are here. You can have the best international non-governmental organization in the world, but you know they’re going to leave. We’ve used the foundation of the church to get out and mobilize and treat early. That’s the blessing we have.”

“I flame above the beauty of the fields to signify the earth –  the matter from which humanity was made. . . . "

I traveled to Myanmar in June, 2014, in order to present a human rights workshop requested by my congregation, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, as part of a desire to learn new skills and develop new visions for their ministries. My lack of knowledge was diminished by pre-reading of history and politics; other reservations kept my anxiety high until I met the sisters. The sisters in Myanmar had anxieties as well.

GSR Today - Last week, Twitter reports started buzzing from Australia – angry, profanity-filled back-and-forths from people debating nuns’ habits. What is going on?

More than 2,200 people packed the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark Oct. 4 to celebrate the first beatification liturgy in the United States. Sr. Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, a Sister of Charity of St. Elizabeth from Bayonne, was given the title "blessed" in a joyful ceremony conducted in three languages – English, Latin and Slovak.

Nuns on the Bus visit West Virginia and North Carolina - Halfway through the tour, Nuns on the Bus has been in seven different states since starting Sept. 17 in Iowa, meeting voters and listening to the concerns of people who believe in social justice and citizen engagement.

I live at the corner of the United States and Mexico, just at the point where the Rio Grande makes a sharp turn to the southeast and becomes the border between our two countries. To my disappointment, the riverbed is empty again after an oh-so-brief summer season of irrigation. We enjoyed water in the great river from late May until early August. The drought of the past six years has severely lowered the water levels in the reservoirs along the Rio Grande, causing the authorities to cut back the allocations to farmers and municipalities, hence the dry riverbed that will soon become littered with tumbleweeds and trash.

Catholic physicians today find themselves contradicting "much that has made its way into the medical profession and yet is destroying the profession of medicine," said a Dominican sister who is a physician. Dominican Sr. Mary Diana Dreger, who is board certified in internal medicine, made the comments in an address to the 600 participants attending the 83rd annual Catholic Medical Association education conference in Orlando. She spoke Sept. 27 about "The Catholic Physician: A Sign of (Non) Contradiction."