Sr. Barbara Paleczny, a Canadian School Sister of Notre Dame, has lived in South Sudan for nine years. Based in Juba, she travels throughout the country, her work focused on healing through workshops that offer trauma/psychosocial support for those affected by the country's ongoing civil war, and on training others to lead these workshops.

LCWR 2017 - A familiar Spanish saying defines the experience and worldview of Sr. Teresa Maya: Ni de aquí, ni de allá ("from neither here nor there"). A Mexican-American Sister of Charity of the Incarnate Word, she transitions to become president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious on Aug. 11, the final night of its annual assembly.

"How many people continue today in a wayward life because they find no one willing to look at them in a different way, with the eyes — or better yet — with the heart of God, meaning with hope. Jesus sees the possibility of a resurrection even in those who have made so many wrong choices."

"Ultimately, indigenous politicians want the world community to realize that to live in peace is to share the world together by accommodating each other, rather than assimilating the weaker."

Over the past six years, Sr. Martina Leaka has helped more than 60 young people in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, find meaning in their lives and has prepared them for adulthood by training them at a center called Porter's House. There, they learn skills that enable them to be self-reliant, including sewing and baking products sold across the city.

In the midst of polarization and uncertainty, we, as people of faith, are called to preach truth, and to be truth-tellers.

"Part of any transformative process involves a letting-go. It's always a matter of trying to choose new life, trying to choose a way forward, a loving response, but it doesn't come without something else needing to be let go of."

Updated: During her decades of ministry, the Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary was a champion for the collaborative form of leadership that has become indicative of LCWR and of women religious in the United States.

Malaysia is the destination country of thousands of migrant persons known as Rohingya, an ethnic group long settled but denied citizenship in their birth country of Myanmar. The Rohingya ethnicity implies Muslim religious identification, making them a double minority in Myanmar. This column reflects the experiences of our Good Shepherd Sisters' shelters in Malaysia, giving a small glimpse of the vast perils and occasional small victories of the human spirit told through stories.