by Catholic News Service
The federal government is pursuing its case against the Little Sisters of the Poor in an attempt to get the religious order to comply with newly issued interim rules regarding the Department of Health and Human Services' contraception mandate under the Affordable Care Act.
by Eucharia Madueke
Contributor
Among people of traditional culture in southeastern Nigeria where I am from, and in other traditional African cultures, gender is not a fundamental organizing principle. Nor is human anatomy a major defining factor in gender relations. People here believe that being a man or a woman is generally irrelevant to individuals’ social roles and relationships. Rather, they perceive the individuals’ social power, as well as social role, as dependent mostly on age and seniority, position at birth, and their contributions to family and community development. The community recognizes anatomic female and male categories, but they are not a defining factor for social roles.
Eucharia Madueke is a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur from Nigeria. With an academic background in education, religion, development and public policy, she has taught on the secondary and university levels in Nigeria and the United States. She has led many workshops in Africa in grassroots organizing and advocacy centered around Catholic social teaching. She served as provincial of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Nigerian Province.
From A Nun's Life podcasts - Are sisters conducting surveillance to find new recruits? A listener asks the sisters about that phenomenon. Global Sisters Report is delighted to share short clips from A Nun's Life Ministry's engaging shows, including “Ask Sister,” “In Good Faith” and “Motherhouse Road Trip.”
GSR Today - When it comes to comments from strangers, the Internet can be a vile and scary place for women. What’s nice about the Global Sisters Report is that: A) we don’t have a comments section (although you can comment on stories you like on our Facebook page); and B) our readers are, for the most part, civil.
by GSR Staff
“Literacy is a key lever of change and a practical tool of empowerment on each of the three main pillars of sustainable development: economic development, social development and environmental protection.”
GSR Today - Sr. Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK lobby, is set to launch a new – the third – Nuns on the Bus tour next week. Global Sisters Report will be there covering the Sept. 17 kick off in Des Moines, Iowa, and our liaison to women religious in the U.S., Sr. Jan Cebula, OSF, will even be on the bus for the first five days of the tour.
This time it’s the Catholic sisters versus the Koch brothers. That’s one way to look at the upcoming Nuns on the Bus tour, which hits the road next week (Sept. 17) for the third time in three years, a month-long trip through 10 key U.S. Senate battleground states to campaign against the influence of outside money on politics.
Catholic News Service
Pope Francis mourned the deaths of three Xaverian Missionary Sisters of Mary, who were murdered in two separate attacks in their residence in Burundi. Sr. Lucia Pulici, 75, and Sr. Olga Raschietti, 82, were found dead Sept. 7 in their mission residence in the capital of Bujumbura. Sr. Bernadetta Bogianni, 79, who had found the bodies, was killed the next night.
Catholic News Service
Nineteenth-century missionaries arrived in Africa with a Bible in one hand and a plough in the other. Jesuit Br. Paul Desmarais still has a Bible, but he's given up on the plough. For 40 years, Desmarais has run the Kasisi Agricultural Training Centre in Zambia. But over the past 20 years he has rethought almost every aspect of conventional Western agriculture and how it's applied in Africa.
