GSR Today - Great news! In its first 24 hours, globalsistersreport.org was viewed in more than 70 countries. What were people reading the most? Sr. Joan Chittisters' column on the strength of the "Global Sisterhood," Sr. Elizabeth Johnson on feminist theology and Chris Herlinger on South Sudan.
by GSR Staff
Religion of migrants - A new study called Faith on the Move looks at the religious affiliation of international migrants. Though they represent a small percentage of the world’s population, about three percent, international migrants as a group would constitute the fifth largest country in the world, according to the report by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. That’s a country of 214 million people.
GSR Today - Women are the world’s initial nurturers, early educators, health providers. Given the opportunity for education, especially higher education, they most often seize it, eventually changing the complexion of families, organizations and governments. In so doing they have enriched education, health care and development efforts. Their impact on understanding war, peace and ecology continues to be chronicled.
Carol Stanton, a former television news anchor and reporter, has served the Diocese of Orlando, Florida, as communications director and director of lay ministry formation. She holds a doctorate in theology from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
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.
Joyce Meyer is a Sister of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and served as executive director of the Conrad N. Hilton Fund for Sisters, a grant-making organization supporting the works of Catholic sisters globally, from 1999 through October 2011.
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.
Copy editor Tracy Abeln joined National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company in March 2012.
Sandra M. Schneiders is professor emerita of New Testament studies and Christian spirituality at Jesuit School of Theology, Santa Clara University, Berkeley, Calif., and author of Prophets in Their Own Country: Women Religious Bearing Witness to the Gospel in a Troubled Church (2012), among other publications. She is a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, Michigan.
