Rhina Guidos

Monday Starter: More than 150 sisters have signed a letter urging international leaders to do more to end hostilities in the Holy Land.

At their annual CLAR leadership gathering, this year held in Honduras, Latin American men and women religious reflected on their role as a synodal church amid political instability, persecution and economic inequality.

The bishop leading the U.S. Catholic Church's response on migration issues said that both major political parties are participating in anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. 

There's no signage to point out who's buried there, but the fenced-off, arid field in Holtville, California, is the final resting place for many border crossers who died in anonymity in the surrounding area.

A generation of younger women religious in Latin America say St. Oscar Romero, martyred in 1980 in El Salvador, inspired their vocations and guides their ministries. 

The UISG assembly coincides with the 2025 Jubilee and the 60th anniversary of the founding of the assembly.

Women religious haven't been spared the suffering the Catholic Church is going through in Nicaragua, said a sister GSR correspondent Rhina Guidos met with in January while visiting El Salvador. At a moment's notice, she'd had to prepare to welcome a group of nuns forced to leave their ministry behind in Nicaragua.

Sisters from various congregations journeyed from San Diego via the cold desert toward Mexico, to see what the landscape, migrants and the Holy Spirit had to say to them during a five-day border pilgrimage.

A group of women religious is calling on other sisters, men religious and their friends to fast this Lent as a means to call attention to gun violence in the U.S. 

Following record-breaking crossings of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, sisters and church leaders call for Christian empathy for those fleeing their homes all over the world. 

With their ministries and presence in towns that continue to suffer from Colombia's 50-year-long conflict, nuns contribute to the peace process through accompaniment.

GSR Today - Even as crowds gather at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe below, eight Discalced Carmelite sisters maintain a contemplative space in their often-unnoticed monastery, which celebrated 130 years in May. 

A group of Catholic sisters gathered Nov. 28-30 in Mexico City to showcase and talk about their work with vulnerable communities in Latin America with funding from the U.S.-based Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. 

In welcoming attendees of CLAR's IV Latin American and Caribbean Congress of Religious Life, CLAR president Sr. Liliana Franco Echeverri said that "our structures are in need of renewal," because "there are structures that suffocate and ways of proceeding that deny what is human."

"We pray daily that a nonviolent solution may be found to bring lasting peace and security to all of God’s people in the region, a safe return of the hostages, and an end to unfathomable suffering." 

Contemplative sisters participate in the Synod of Bishops from afar through prayer.

Any discussion on the mission of women in the church needs to be accompanied by examining how Jesus treated women, and that is what should be imitated, Company of Mary Sr. Liliana Franco said at the Synod of Bishops.

Even as Catholic women take a historic step as voting members of the Synod of Bishops, former Irish President Mary McAleese slammed the Vatican Oct. 13 in a parallel gathering in Rome calling for more equality for women.

Two Catholic sisters taking part in Pope Francis' summit on the church's future told GSR the synod is different than expected. "I'm experiencing and witnessing the dismantling of the hierarchical," said Mercy Sr. Angela Perez.

Sr. Patricia Murray said that Pope Francis' process for the synod on synodality is helping "shift the feeling that the truth resides at the top of the hierarchy."