"People know about the scientific facts of environmentalism. But faith is their belief, it is the ethical part of environmentalism. What does your faith say about the environment? What does your Bible or Quran say? If you link it to that, people take it into their hearts and it’s more effective. It’s our responsibility."

Notes from the Field - I split my workweek between Big Laurel and the high school at the bottom of the mountain. As an aide, I feel pressure to step up and raise the classroom standard, but my lack of teaching experience is a big stumbling block.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - We talk with special guest Loretto Sr. Maureen Fiedler, host of the radio program Interfaith Voices and frequent blogger for National Catholic Reporter.

"How do we disperse the seeds of the Gospel?"

GSR Today - This past weekend, I was in St. Louis for a symposium on religious life hosted by the Council of Major Superior of Women Religious (all the details coming in a story later this week), and it was one of the strangest journalism experiences of my life. Not the symposium itself, but the timing.

For Sr. Jane Frances Nabakaawa, a Daughter of Mary working on her doctorate in spirituality at Catholic Theological Union, there is a world of difference between Chicago where she studies and her native Uganda. But her years in the United States studying first for master's degrees in theology and divinity and now for her doctorate, as well as time spent working in Kenya, have taught her something: Some things, no matter where you go, never change.

"On the International Day of Tolerance, let us recognize the mounting threat posed by those who strive to divide, and let us pledge to forge a path defined by dialogue, social cohesion and mutual understanding."

GSR Today - Displaced children's lives; South Sudan's violence; people's climate march; refugees' tough job prospects are the subject of this week's Monday crisis blog.

When the Vatican confirmed that Pope Francis would visit Kenya later this month, women from the Dolly Craft center in Nairobi asked to celebrate the pope with three handmade vestments. The Vatican approved the request, and the women began to sew. Dolly Craft, which gets its name from its initial project of making African dolls, is an income-generating facility in Kangemi, a slum about 20 miles from the capital, operated by the Jesuit-run St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, where Pope Francis will be visiting next week.