Simply Spirit: For the most part — at least until recently — Mary of Magdala's witness was all but invisible in Christian history, even though her testimony is the lynchpin upon which the proclamation of the resurrection depends.

After six years living and working in Chile, in 2013 I returned to live at our motherhouse in rural Kentucky. In Chile, at Casa Ursulina, I loved my ministry to and with a remarkable community of women of low income. But I had just turned 80 and was looking for something less strenuous.

When Santa Clara Home opened in 1994, Chile still didn't have treatment for HIV infection. Infants and children brought to the orphanage in Santiago for children with HIV and AIDS came for death with dignity, said Sr. Nora Valencia of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Jesus, the director of Santa Clara Home.

"Love will always be victorious. The one who loves can do everything."

A group of 167 Catholics in India, including more than 80 sisters, have signed a letter urging that Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who is accused of raping a nun in 2014, be removed from pastoral duties.

Indian officials are seeking to freeze bank accounts of the Missionaries of Charity following the arrest of a nun on child trafficking charges in Jharkhand state.

Counting on her fingers to keep track of points in an ice-breaker game she was playing with a young woman at the Fiat Days discernment retreat, an aspirant for the Salesian Sisters of St. John Bosco rattled off the names of various scents from the Bath & Body Works collection: "Cucumber Melon," "Lavender Vanilla," "Country Apple."

You can understand a lot about a particular group of people by getting to know their proverbs. From my time in South Africa, I remember one saying in particular that shines a light on African culture.

The overwhelming majority of those pursuing vocations in Catholic religious life in the church were born into the faith. But a small, steady stream of men and women choose first to become Catholic and then, in what is perhaps an even larger leap of faith, choose religious life itself.

"There is no American or Guatemalan. There is no English-speaker or Mam-speaker. There is no immigrant or citizen. We are all one in Christ Jesus. We belong to Christ and one another."