A dozen women from around the world shared compelling and sometimes harrowing stories of their struggles for peace, education and equality during a Vatican event on International Women's Day, with some calling for better representation and women's leadership at the highest levels of the Catholic church. The event, organized as an opportunity for women to share their voices from the center of the church bureaucracy, was careful to skirt the issue of women's governance in the Catholic community, choosing to speak instead of women's capabilities to share leadership.

GSR Today - Here we highlight the ministry and mission of Catholic women religious every day, but as part of our coverage of National Catholic Sisters Week, we're focusing on four women who are on their journey to religious life. Please read their stories and share with others who may be considering such a path.

St. Joseph of Carondelet Sr. Mary Madonna Ashton is a 2016 National Women's History Project honoree, among other women who are being honored for their work in public service and government. Ashton was Minnesota's state commissioner of health for eight years during the time the department took on the tobacco industry, starting a nationwide trend.

"Women and girls are critical to finding sustainable solutions to the challenges of poverty, inequality and the recovery of the communities hardest hit by conflicts, disasters and displacements."

GSR Today - It has been said that terrorists are cowards: Without the courage to face armed soldiers in actual battle, they instead target unarmed civilians, and a "victory" is spreading fear and paranoia.

"It sounded like a voice in my head was saying, 'You need to go back to the convent.'" To celebrate National Catholic Sisters Week, which runs March 8-14, GSR is exploring the vocations of four women discerning their call.

"Not only has she found true happiness in her vocation, but we have been drawn into the life and spirituality of the Daughters of Charity." In honor of National Catholic Sisters Week, which runs March 8-14, GSR follows the stories of four women in the formation process.

The Dominican Sisters are "educated, passionate and making a big difference in New Orleans in the name of God . . . I wanted to follow in their footsteps." In honor of National Catholic Sisters Week, which runs March 8-14, GSR looks into the formation process.

"God calls women from all different walks of life, from different stages, and all sorts of women. . . . The only consistent influence is that God is calling." To celebrate National Catholic Sisters Week, which runs March 8-14, GSR features four women in formation.

From the dawn of our species, what we know about the universe has come from the power of observation, that is, what we can observe in a light-filled universe. In the 13th-century Oxford theologian Robert Grosseteste described the beginning of all physical life from light. One of his major works De Luce begins with God's creation of a single point of light which, through expansion and extension, he claimed, evoked the entire physical order into existence. The expansion of light replicating itself infinitely in all directions, he speculated, is the basis of the created world. Grosseteste was not too far from modern physics.