"I think the diminishment we are facing is almost forcing us to look around at each other, and as we have said in my community, 'This is who we are. This is all we've got.' "
Christian theology has long been based on words. But are there other ways of understanding faith? Can music be one of them? Verbum Dei Sr. Maeve Heaney explores such questions in Suspended God: Music and a Theology of Doubt.
"We need to be touched, we need to be hugged and we need to be loved," says Sr. Rosalind Gefre, who from the mid-1990s to 2020 gave free massages at the St. Paul Saints minor league baseball games.
From working with rural communities in Nicaragua to directing campus ministry for U.S. students in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Sr. Laura Zelten's love for God drove her to put others first and draw them closer to Jesus.
Sr. Mary Rose of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration in Mymensingh, Bangladesh, popularly known as the "monastery sisters," is actively working to increase the number of members of their congregation.
For Dearbhail McDonald, "The Last Nuns in Ireland" is both a personal and public attempt to make some kind of peace with a complicated spiritual and cultural legacy.
"We have to keep educating girls because they are our future, our hope that this world will become more equal and that we will become more life-giving," says Sr. Dusty Farnan, who represents Dominicans at the U.N.
As a parenting specialist with the Fathers & Families Support Center in St. Louis, Daughter of Charity Sr. Carol Schumer worked to teach parents the importance of their presence in their child's life.
Ecuador is under the spotlight of the international press because of recent violence linked to drug trafficking. Sr. Maritza Rolón Cevallos talks to GSR about how she confronts this crisis through her prison ministry.