Thomas Scaria

A chance meeting with a transgender woman led members of the Sister of Our Lady of Fatima to ongoing ministry and training programs with the transgender community.

Holy Cross Srs. Fidelis Nedumpara and Clara Alappat founded Jeevodaya Ashram 27 years ago in the suburbs of Bengaluru, India, to help women who are released from prisons, and girls who are rescued from sex rackets.

Hundreds of Catholic nuns have joined activists in India to protest the under-construction Vizhinjam Port, which opponents say is causing environmental destruction and leading to displacement of the fishing community.

Catholic nuns from various congregations are engaged in saving India's young people from addictions to substances and alcohol.

St. Joseph of Saint-Marc Sr. Ligi Payyappilly, a native of India who is now a Ukraine citizen, has been using her network as a renowned retreat preacher to support her rescue operations and refugee services.

Sr. Mary Mascarenhas has been called "the Mother Teresa of Bengaluru" for her 40 years of outstanding work among leprosy patients. She shared with GSR her struggles for restoring the dignity of leprosy patients.

Catholic sisters in Sri Lanka join protesters calling for changes in Sri Lanka amid economic and political crises. The movement has united people from different ethnic and religious communities.

More than 400 women in the Indian cities Mangaluru and Bengaluru have taken up trades and self-employment projects to overcome pandemic trauma. Four congregations of women religious are helping them.

A convent in western Ukraine that until recently sheltered refugees has been turned into a retreat center where nuns use music therapy to console and comfort. A five-member band of trained musicians, all nuns, sings, prays and consoles people affected by depression and anxiety.

At Sumanahalli in Bengaluru, India, sisters use an integrated approach to treat and rehabilitate leprosy patients. "We follow different charisms and spirituality, but when we work together, they help people differently."

Sr. Dulcie Peiris, the superior of the Salvatorian formation center in Sri Lanka, said the nation's current economic crises are unlike anything she has experienced, "not even during the 30 years of civil war."

A Catholic nun from India serving the war-hit people of Ukraine says hungry and frustrated Russian soldiers now invade Ukrainian homes, loot food and rape women.

Some 80 Ukraine women and children — including baby Michael, born a day before the Russian invasion — are staying at the Sisters of St. Joseph of Saint-Marc convent in Mukachevo in western Ukraine.

"The sisters took us to their convent in their vehicles, hugged each of us with their love and warmth, gave us food, a warm hall to sleep in and escorted us in the morning to cross the Romania border," one student said.

Sr. Maria Nirmalini, unanimously elected president of Conference of Religious in India, plans to encourage sisters to realize their strengths and assert their dignity as God's chosen women.

Although the end of Sri Lanka's civil war brought some relief, suspicion and tension remain between Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Bridging the gap between the hearts needed much [more] effort than political willpower.

Salvatorian nuns have built houses in various parts of Sri Lanka for more than 200 families in need, especially households with single parents, widows and victims of the island nation's 1983-2009 civil war.

Catholic nuns are rejoicing in the success of an historic yearlong protest by India's farmers against federal reforms that deregulated crop prices and opened fields to corporate interests.

At a center near a war-devastated region in Sri Lanka, Salvatorian nuns care for children who are war orphans and victims of sexual exploitation. They help the children cope with trauma from the civil war that ended in 2009.

The Kerala High Court on Sept. 18 gave special permission to Sr. Jofi Joseph and other members of a farmers group after they complained about the menace from the boars.