Insight - Global Sisters Report reprints an excerpt from New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity by Mary Johnson, S.N.D. de N., Patricia Wittberg, S.C., and Mary L. Gautier, with permission from Oxford University Press USA.  © 2014 Oxford University Press.

In 1958, eight Dominican sisters from Sparkill, N.Y., traveled to Bahawalpur, Pakistan, as missionaries. Within seven years, a Pakistani congregation of Dominican sisters was receiving its first postulants. Today, there are 14 Pakistani Sparkill Dominicans sisters serving Pakistan’s Christian community in education and health ministries. Two of them talked to GSR about their ministries while visiting their U.S. motherhouse this month.

This morning I was challenged by an inner energy inviting me to “Listen to my longing.” As this invitation settled in my heart, I felt my gut moving toward panic. Where is my longing leading me today? Can I honestly answer this question?

It’s impossible to know exactly how many women entered religious life with an unrequited or latent desire for priestly ministry. But if the current number of Womenpriests who used to be sisters is any indication, it was more than a few. There’s no hard data on the issue, but insiders at Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an international organization that has ordained about 103 women and married men since 2002, estimate that more than half of the women they’ve ordained were once Catholic sisters. 

The nationwide campaign for 10 million signatures to pass a bill that will abolish the pork barrel system kicked off here today with a rally in Luneta Park co-organized with the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines (AMRSP). The campaign is part of an effort needed to enact a law drafted through "people's initiative" that would prohibit all forms of pork-barrel budgeting, explained Benedictine Sr. Mary John Mananzan, co-convener of Abolish Pork Movement civil society group.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - Does a fire burn within certain people that compels them to want more from their religion? Sr. Patricia Wittberg talks about people who are constantly searching.

Regular readers of the Global Sisters Report know that Catholic Sisters worldwide are increasingly involved in efforts against human trafficking. While the general public is gradually becoming more aware of the uncomfortable reality that millions of women, men and children are forced to work or compelled to participate in commercial sexual activity through force, fraud or coercion, sisters have faced the social sin of human trafficking head on for years.

GSR Today - Does anyone else think that women religious should be issued superhero capes with their habits? Certainly Nicholas Kristof does after writing in the The New York Times over the weekend that nuns just might trump Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. But you and I both know that sisters doing super things is just par for the course, as we see once again this week.

"We ought to relate to Miriam of Nazareth as a partner in hope, in the company of all the holy women and men who have gone before us. . . ."