One nun's journey from Iraq to the US and the Catholic Church: Boston University used to call this popular nun "Blue Lightning," a reference to Olga Yaqob's boundless yet intensely focused energy. After six years as a part-time campus minister, she became the university's Catholic chaplain in 2010, the second woman to ever hold that position. Today, she is founder and superior of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth, a fledgling community of women religious in the Boston archdiocese.

We enter the Easter Triduum shaken to the bone by news some 280 people – mostly teenagers from as single high school – are missing at sea after a ship carrying 475 people capsized off the coast of South Korea. Eighteen were confirmed dead by Thursday afternoon with dozens more injured. Rescuers were frantically fighting bad weather and frigid waters as they searched for possible survivors in a small air trap within the five-story ship.

By now, most people know that I am not a fan of the "Christian" movie genre when these films are more about teaching than storytelling and making sure audiences get "the message" rather than trusting them to use their own moral and religious imagination to savor the story. These films might be movies, but they are certainly not art.

"The Holy Spirit is making mischief," Sr. Simone Campbell says near the end of the forthcoming documentary "Radical Grace." Campbell's quote is an apt summary of the film, which captures one of most extraordinary years in the Catholic church's recent history: beginning in April 2012 with the outraged response to the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, reaching a crescendo with the stunning resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and drawing to a surprising conclusion with the election of Pope Francis in March 2013.

Benedictine Sr. Edita Eslopor and fellow Typhoon Haiyan survivors gained Cardinal Luis Tagle’s support for their effort to press the Philippines government for more efficient and humanitarian response to the crisis left by the devastating typhoon that hit the central Philippines in November.