"It's really just listening to the Spirit's invitation. None of it was ever planned."

Speakers at the "Daughters of Wisdom: Women and Leadership in the Global Church" conference at DePaul University in Chicago are themselves evidence of women already exercising leadership in academia, religious life, and social and environmental justice organizations around the world. "We are very powerful," said Sr. Rosemary Nyirumbe. "The truth is that without women, the church cannot stand."

Mother Mary McGreevy is serving her second term as chairperson of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. The major superior of the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma, Michigan, McGreevy spoke with GSR about her life, her leadership style and the future of CMSWR.

At an event to draw attention to the work of Catholic sisters in the world's most dangerous regions, Sr. Patricia Murray, executive director of the International Union of Superiors General, said women religious are "radically committed to incarnating the Gospel here and now, living the beatitudes and bringing the love of God to ever-new frontiers."

Notes from the Field - Some of my most memorable journeys in Haiti have been accompanying visiting medical mission teams as a translator into the rural countryside of Gros Morne county. 

In 1973, our congregation was invited to have sisters prepared to call Catholics who would come forward during a Billy Graham crusade. Through that experience, the Rev. Graham touched my life, and his organization taught me real-life lessons in ecumenism.

"Every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own State. When there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there. The fact that he is a citizen of a particular State does not deprive him of membership in the human family, nor of citizenship in that universal society, the common, world-wide fellowship of men."

From A Nun's Life podcasts - In this Random Nun Clip, we answer question from someone listening in from Malaysia, a person who has been thinking about becoming a sister for years.

The Catholic Church has never opposed science, but then what prevents the church from embracing modern science? Pope Pius XII opened the door to evolution in his 1950 encyclical Humani generis, and Pope John Paul II spoke of the need to reconcile science and religion, saying they can mutually enrich one another.

Before she found herself uprooted, Sr. Cypriana Lyu and three other Charity Sisters of Jesus were just settling into their new mission in the village of Kerepi, South Sudan. They arrived in South Sudan in 2011, and after a few years of getting to know the community, they had just started building a secondary school for girls.