In the last few months, we have welcomed a few people to our NCR staff. In September, we announced that NCR was the recipient of a Conrad N. Hilton Foundation grant to expand our coverage of women religious across the globe. Since then, we have been building a team here in Kansas City, Mo., to shepherd that project. The full team came on board in January.

As Americans gather around the television to watch the Super Bowl on Feb. 2, human trafficking victims' advocates, social service agencies and law enforcement officials will use this major sporting event to bring awareness to the plight of the millions of people who are trafficked across the globe each year.

For the past decade, Lovers of the Holy Cross of Cho Quan Sr. Elizabeth Huynh Thi Uu has been paying visits two or three times a week to groups of Vietnamese migrant workers at Saint Paul Church to provide pastoral care.

"Other religious and I offer catechism courses to those who want to convert to Catholicism, give marriage preparations to couples, and teach basic catechism to their children," Uu said. The sisters also hold seminars on human values and living skills for migrant workers.

At the Global Rights of Nature summit, Vandana Shiva, an internationally renowned physicist and environmental activist, led the ritual Thursday on our last morning in Otavalo, sharing some of India’s poems and hymns to Mother Earth. One began, “Whatever, I dig of you, O Earth, may that grow quickly upon you.”

The sun was beginning to cut the chill of the Andean morning when the group gathered around a fountain in an outdoor courtyard. This is how the summit of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature  began, with Tai Ta Carlos, an elder from this territory, leading a ceremony of thanksgiving to Pachamama, Mother Earth, for the life that sustains us. Speaking of the damage we are doing to Earth, he said, “We must recognize that we are part of the natural world.”

We traveled three hours by bus northeast from Quito, Ecuador, climbing winding roads up the highlands of the Andes Mountains, past craggy canyons, hillside farms and village settlements. Our destination was Otavalo, at the foot of the Imbabura volcano, where we joined nearly 50 leaders of the emergent “rights of nature” movement for a four-day global summit.

While so many of us worry about the lack of pediatric care in depressed areas of the world, Mercy Sr. Karen Schneider, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, has found a creative, positive way to address children's needs by founding Mercy Medical Missions.

Sr. Camille: When and how did this come about?

During the 2010 Christmas season, the Benedictine sisters of Baltimore found themselves in the midst of a modern-day Christmas story. The sisters were asked to provide shelter to an eight-month-pregnant Muslim woman seeking asylum in the United States.

Amina, a woman from Afghanistan, was forced to flee her home earlier in 2010 because she was pregnant and unmarried and her life was in danger. How she arrived in Baltimore is a mystery to those who helped her, but when she came seeking a place to stay, they knew they had to do something to keep her safe.

A formidable multi-billion-dollar human-trafficking industry has driven Catholic religious women to collaborate among themselves and with other sectors of society to stop what Pope Francis has called "the most extensive form of slavery of the 21st century." Since International Union of Superiors General (UISG) established Talitha Kum ("Little girl, arise") in 2009*, the anti-trafficking network of women religious, has developed a program of activities banking on partnerships established by the UISG central office in Rome as well as a network of local anti-trafficking teams.

A growing number of films focusing on the lives of women religious are currently drawing viewer interest.

"The Nuns on the Bus movement sponsored by NETWORK and the [Leadership Conference of Women Religious] dialogue with the Vatican has brought religious women within a secular spotlight and has sparked people's curiosity," said Charity Sr. Rejane Cytacki of Leavenworth, Kan. "Now is a time of renewed interest about how religious sisters live and work."