Caitlin Hendel joined NCR in July 2013 as managing editor, returning home to Kansas City after 16 years in
Washington, D.C., where she covered the U.S. economy for Bloomberg and Congress for CQ Roll Call. She
also spent 10 years at The Kansas City Star and is a graduate of the University of Kansas. She and her husband
of 30 years, John, have two children. While in Maryland, she was active in various advocacy groups for
This story appears in the Sisters Making Mainstream Headlines feature series. View the full series.
April 25, 2014
Blogging, tweeting, doing battle in court – just a few of the things that mainstream media have been reporting about women religious this week.
by Christine Schenk
April 24, 2014
It is 1971, and I find myself walking eagerly down a tree-shaded driveway in Fox Chase, Philadelphia, heading for an interview with the Medical Mission Sisters. I was 23 years old and the proud possessor of a shiny new master's degree in nursing. I hoped to discover if my God-search would find a home with this exciting international group of women.
by Colleen Gibson
Columnist
April 24, 2014
I began my two-year novitiate with the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Philadelphia in the fall of 2012. That beginning meant the end of many things. At the age of 26, it meant leaving behind my major possessions, relinquishing access to my personal savings and leaving my job ministering at an inner-city parish’s community center.
by Caroline Mbonu
NCR Contributor
April 24, 2014
Religious life on the Africa continent dates back to early Christianity. During the second and third centuries, the Egyptian desert and other parts of North Africa were alive with women and men, desert mothers and fathers, who “renounced the world,” and withdrew to the desert in order to have a deeper and a more intimate union with God.
April 24, 2014
If you ask director and filmmaker Richard Ray Perez if the story of Cesar Chavez chose him or if he chose to tell Chavez's story, he would say both. Following the screening of his new film, "Cesar's Last Fast," at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress Film Showcase March 14, he told the audience that when he was 5 years old in the late 1960s, he first became aware of the table grape boycott while eating lunch at Head Start.
by Elizabeth Johnson
April 23, 2014
There is a powerful scene in the Gospels that shows in a flash how life-giving the encounter between Jesus and women can be. As Luke tells the story: Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath, and a woman came in who had been crippled by a spirit for 18 years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she stood up straight and began to praise God. (Lk 13:10-13)
by N.J. Viehland
April 23, 2014
At the Fatima Center for Human Development, children learn farm and other trade skills to become self-sufficient in the Philippines, thanks to the dedication of Sr. Felicitas De Lima and other Daughters of St. Augustine.
Julie Vieira (she/her), is a writer, presenter and thinker in spirituality with particular attentiveness to living the darkness and light — the poetry and rough prose — of everyday life. She is a member of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, Michigan. She also works as a retreat director and as a consultant in the unfolding of religious life and mission. Her care for the earth has led her to working with the elements of stone and metal in her art. She holds a Master of Arts in theology from St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto.
Sr. Maxine Kollasch co-founded A Nuns Life Ministry, a vibrant online community where Catholic sisters engage with people worldwide around faith, vocation and finding joy in everyday life. Founded on the Internet in 2006 with Sr. Julie Vieira, the ministry is present online and in many social media.