As Pope Francis' plane was cruising through Chinese airspace in mid-August en route to his first visit to the Far East, 20 Chinese priests and nuns were assembling halfway around the globe at a retreat house in the United States, preparing to begin a week of quiet prayer and reflection. The gathering at the Cenacle Retreat Center in Long Island, N.Y., was affiliated with the Chinese Seminary Teachers and Formators Project, an initiative launched by Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers in 1991 to help train priests and women religious for various leadership roles in the church in China.

A Missionary Sister of the Precious Blood, Sr. Clara Mangwengwe is secretary to the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Zimbabwe (CMRS). It is a long way from her home in the deeply rural central province. She is the communications’ hub for the conference and runs the organization either electronically from her convent 55 miles outside Harare or her office in the capital city twice a week.

Bishop Salvatore Matano, the new bishop of Rochester, N.Y., is in the process of ending a 40-year custom of permitting lay ministers to preach at Mass. Most are women commissioned to preach by the former bishop, Matthew Clark. Rochester isn't the only diocese to shut down long-established lay preaching customs. In 2008, outgoing St. Paul-Minneapolis Archbishop Harry Flynn instructed pastors to discontinue a 25-year-old practice even though 29 parishes had active lay preaching programs in place.

"A loving God must have a new life of unimaginable joy and peace prepared for these precious unknown, uncelebrated martyrs . . . ."

Three stats and a map - Yesterday, on Women’s Equality Day, many people in the United States celebrated the 94th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote. However, economic inequality is still a factor when it comes to gender in developed as well as developing nations.

What's so great about change? We are learning from quantum physics that change is our one constant. Everything around us including ourselves is constantly evolving and changing. Every interaction we have affects us and helps shape who we are becoming. But it is not just through what I have studied that I now value change. It is also through my experiences.

See for Yourself - One of the highlights of summer is going to the fair. It doesn’t matter what type – county fair, regional fair, state fair. Any fair is a grand celebration of what’s best about society, including agriculture, home arts, food and community.

Unlike some predictions, Sr. Mary Johnson’s vision of what a successful religious institute will look like 20 years from now flows from statistical analysis. Relying on two major studies of women religious conducted 10 years apart, Johnson and two other academics look at the experiences of women who entered religious life in the United States after 1965 in a new book, New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity. 

GSR Today - Assistant editor Tracy Abeln and I were at the LCWR National Assembly staffing the NCR/Global Sisters Report exhibit booth. I’ll be reflecting on Nancy Schreck’s insightful and thought-provoking keynote presentation for days to come. For now, one quotation Nancy included continues to resonate with me. It’s the one by Alice Walker which provoked immediate applause.

"We met ‘To uplift woman's fallen divinity / Upon an even pedestal with man,’ And strange as it may seem to many we then and there declared our right to vote according to the Declaration of the government under which we live."