Sr. Jane Wakahiu is a member of the Institute of the Little Sisters of St. Francis, Kenya, and director of the Catholic Sisters Program for the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. She is the former director of the African Catholic Sisters Education Collaborative, which conducts educational activities in nine African countries, including Nigeria and South Sudan, where the ravages of war and other human tragedies continue to significantly affect millions of people.

This story appears in the Iraq feature series. View the full series.

GSR Today - In the weeks since I first reported on a group of Iraqi Dominican sisters refusing to leave Mosul after an ISIL takeover, the situation has taken a drastic turn. According to emails I’ve received from Iraq, the sisters left Mosul in late June after a particularly violent interaction between ISIL – the Islamist group also known as ISIS – and the Kurdish militia known as the Peshmerga.

Commentary - As we see citizens of Murrieta, Calif., turning back buses of women and children headed for a federal processing center, a day after Mayor Alan Long told them to let the government know they opposed its decision to move recent undocumented immigrants to the local Border Patrol station, we now await a moral conscience moment in the welcoming of children and others escaping the violence in Central America.

St. Anges Sr. Dianne Bergant: “Never underestimate how quickly the People of God can turn a corner. Some say we have not come far. But don’t forget what we’ve done. The lives of women and men in the Bible are now being appreciated as people called to be faithful, as people whose lives have messages for us, and not just characters to appear in some Hollywood movie.”

by Joshua J. McElwee

News Editor

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jmcelwee@ncronline.org

From NCRonline.org - The Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education has appointed a woman,  Franciscan Sr. Mary Melone, to lead one of Rome's seven pontifical universities, the special academic institutions established directly under the authority of the pope.

by Joachim Pham

Correspondent

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Around the world, more than 168 million child laborers are at work, and 1.75 million of them live in Vietnam. Catholic nuns there are doing what they can to chip away at this contributing factor to ongoing poverty by encouraging families to keep children in school – often providing financial support to make this possible.

It's summer and time for my annual retreat. Talk to any nun. Most of us would rather forego our vacations than miss this precious interlude of quality time with the One who got us into this mess to begin with. Most years, I go to a quaint hermitage on the bucolic grounds of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine near Ohio's Amish country.