Good sanitation is key to ensuring good health, and COVID-19 reveals the ugly face of inequality in so many ways and in so many countries that lack good, effective and reliable sanitation.
I look back on 60 years of ministry, including working with poor women, I ask: Where do I want to stand, to vote on the issue of abortion? Woman to woman, I seek to listen, to understand, to be compassionate.
Horizons - I have known so many holy people. This time of year, when the veil between the living and the dead becomes even thinner, I can feel their prayers for my vocation, their pushes of encouragement in my journey.
Through a new conversation on the complexity of abortion and other life issues, clergy and laity could build a life-affirming consensus that can ultimately provide grounding for meaningful law in a pluralist society.
The ongoing global pandemic brings struggles but also learnings and maybe surprise blessings. My struggles and learnings during this time are closely related: politics.
Contemplate This: With the breakdown of trust in our democratic processes, it is not clear to me whether there will be enough confidence and willingness to risk that a pluralistic democracy can bring us together.
Horizons - I love wandering around convenience stores. Garage sale signs beckon me. I really enjoy seeing what interesting or oddball items I can find. Choices, diversity and variety are not bad things — even in religion.
The Association of Sisterhoods in Kenya has taken action to help sisters and health workers. They are working with a startup company to provide a new medical data platform to health facilities.
Each moment is eternal. One by one they are offered to us. Some minutes we take hold of, some not. No matter, they all remain. I was awestruck by the beauty in one such moment.
Seeing the unfortunate realities of the poorest of the poor opened my eyes, gave me perspective, raised my consciousness. My encounters with these families made me realize, too, the evangelizing power of the poor.
Pope Francis makes a plea for human solidarity and fraternity. But how does he tell the world what it needs to do when he spearheads an institution grounded in patriarchy, hierarchy and ontological differences?
Horizons - What we once thought would be a momentary interruption to everyday life is in fact a cataclysmic shift. Our work now is to discern — as our first sisters once did — where God is calling us.
Venerable Mary Ward believed that "women in time to come will do much." Her legacy inspires us to be "seekers of truth and doers of justice," in all our ministries, including education and health care.
The only thing that we religious carry from place to place is our mission — to look lovingly, listen carefully, discern prudently and accept respectfully. I often turn to the Lord, and ask him to show me the way.
I am living outside of my home country of India for the first time, and I often get homesick. Yet I am following the footsteps of Jesus, Blessed Mother Mary and St. Francis of Assisi to adapt.
Recently one of our sisters who had served on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation shared a photo of a monument called "Kindred Spirits." It reminds us of mutual compassion after bitter hardships.
Horizons - Pain and tension invite us to ask important questions about what it means to be Catholic — truly Catholic — in these times when so many are suffering without solace.
India's nationwide lockdown severely damaged the lives of its migrant laborers, leaving them without work or food. The suffering of the migrants moved me to stand with them.
The stories behind "A League of Their Own" and "A Secret Love" show that sometimes injustices drag on, but there is strength in hope, as Isaiah promises.
