Horizons - This Lent, it seems the invitation for me is to focus on beauty, to add to and look for and create and celebrate beauty amidst the messiness and challenges of life.

Commentary - The Irish nun, head of Loreto Schools in Rumbek, received the State Department international award for her courage, inner strength and fierce dedication to female empowerment.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - In this Random Nun Clip, the sisters suggest new ways to approach Lent as an opportunity to deepen our relationship with God.

My book club's pick to read this winter was Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road. The book made me recall how Pierre Tielhard de Chardin also described the "road" on which we make life's journey.

The sixth annual celebration of Catholic women religious, which always begins March 8, International Women's Day, and runs through March 14, has a record number of events planned. National Catholic Sisters Week, which focuses on getting laypeople to engage with sisters, continues to grow in part because the program staff have made it easier than ever to participate.

A campaign by faith-based investors and investment networks, spearheaded by a New York congregation of women religious, led the nation's largest consumer bank to announce it intended to stop investing in private prison firms.

A man has been arrested for his alleged involvement in the mass rape of four Catholic nuns that occurred more than two decades ago in central India.

A Global Sisters Report and Catholic News Service contributor in Caracas, Venezuela, was taken by military counterintelligence officials after his home was raided early March 6.

Notes from the Field - My housemate Lindsey and I set out to pursue the promise of a free buffet dinner at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows. On account of a modest stipend, we often go out of our way for free food, but what I found there became much more than that.

Human trafficking has been worsened by Zimbabwe's dire economic situation. Longtime Zimbabwe resident Sr. Janice McLaughlin works with fellow Maryknollers on the issue, through awareness and education, research and advocacy, and trauma counseling.