Sr. Mary Mundy has been a pastoral associate for 23 years of her 52 years in religious life and says she cries every time she leaves a ministry because "friends are precious."

If I have heard it said once, I have heard it said a million times: "I just do not know how to think about this presidential election cycle." If the truth be told, I have said this to myself. Yesterday an answer came to me, but it came in the form of another question: "Is this our Arab Spring?"

In recent years, cancer has been growing at an alarming rate in Vietnam, which has one of the highest fatality rates from the disease in the world. This is largely due to the lack of screenings; patients wait for care until their disease is in its late stages, pointing to the need for education.

Since Ecuador's April 16 earthquake, two Franciscan communities have had sisters on the ground here accompanying people through their grieving and recovery process. Sr. Carmen Isabel Faris is from the Ecuador-based Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Maria Auxiliadora, and Sr. Matilde Solis arrived in Ecuador two weeks after the natural disaster from the Panama-based Franciscan Sisters of Maria Inmaculada. Their congregations have been working together to support the people of Canoa, a town that suffered severe damage during the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

"What diminishment or extinction do we grieve so deeply that we will change our consciousness, lives and actions to grapple with this enormous challenge that now filters like the sun through every part of our lives?"

From A Nun's Life podcasts - If one of the Glorious Mysteries of the rosary brings up painful memories, can I sub in a different one?

The green rolling hills and the rugged countryside were lovely to behold in mid-April as a group of 25 of us from the U.S. boarded our bus and drove through the western counties of Ireland. Across the banks of the River Shannon, we began our religious pilgrimage, visiting ancient ruins of monastic sites such as Clonmacnoise and Glendalough.

GSR Today - "Forced to depend for their survival on the people on whose doors they knock, refugees are in a way thrown outside the realm of 'humanity,' as far as it is meant to confer the rights they aren't afforded. And there are millions upon millions of such people inhabiting our shared planet."

The second in our series of reports about trash management, landfills and the involvement of sisters: The Guatemala City garbage dump is the largest landfill in Central America. More than a third of the country's trash goes there. The scavengers take out and recycle a million pounds a day and in the process expose themselves toxic fumes and hazardous materials. The sisters who teach at the Francisco Coll School know all too well the difficulties their students confront daily.

"Whatever opinion many of us may have as to the cause of emigration, of the fact there is no question."