"I feel we are like a sleeping giant in terms of how much more we can achieve when we begin to network and collaborate and work together across congregations."

On a mission experience sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill to Ecuador in July, the final day on the schedule said: Medical services and mini-Olympics in a distant village. For most of the participants on the trip — sisters, teachers and volunteers — it was hard to imagine a place more remote than the small town where we had helped at a school for children with special needs that is sponsored by the Korean province of the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill.

The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul use part of their facility to offer accommodation to up to 30 patients and their relatives at a time in Ho Chi Mihn City. Most of the lodgers are from families with few resources or ethnic minority groups who live in remote areas. Dominican sisters in the neighboring province of Dong Nai run a charity clinic giving medical treatment to patients who can't make it to the city.

Sr. Senkenesh Gebre-Mariam, a 76-year-old Bethania sister who is the founder and director of the Medhen Social Center, decided to suspend services one day each week during the spring to train her staff to take a completely different approach to treating patients.

"We go from storm to storm; can we trust one another? Can we trust that God will help us find a way?"

On September 2, Sr. Isabel Solá Matas left a bank in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince with money in her purse. Although accounts differ on where Solá, 51, was headed, the Spanish member of the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary never got there. She was shot during a robbery as her SUV sat in traffic.

Eleven sisters make up the Migrant Project/Sicily, a program founded by the International Union Superiors General (UISG) in Rome to aid migrants in Sicily by developing one-on-one relationships with them and helping them assimilate to their new home. About half a year into their mission, the sisters , from eight countries and eight congregations, have witnessed first-hand the motivations and frustrations of people coming from Africa looking for a better life.

When a new social media platform or a new feature emerges, we can discern if and how we want to use it by asking ourselves how it can serve to develop and deepen relationships in our lives, missions, and ministries.

A significant majority of U.S. Americans believe Catholic women religious are trustworthy and that their work is important, but many also believe most wear habits, live in seclusion and that their work has little or no impact on non-Catholics, a new study shows.