Over the past year I have encountered men and women religious from a variety of charisms, backgrounds and opinions. I have participated in an inter-community novitiate program, traveled to motherhouses and priories across the country, and engaged in formal and informal discussions about the vows and the witness of religious life in our day. It has been a year of encounter, and this encounter has fueled my discernment in new and beautiful ways — including, of course, the letting-go of my stereotypes. Pope Francis has spoken repeatedly of this, of our need for a church that reaches out in relationship.

GSR Today - She wasn't able to listen to Pope Francis give his speech to Congress in person, but the view from the lawn of the Capitol was just as good for Global Sisters Report's Franciscan Sr. Jan Cebula.

GSR Today - On the second day of his U.S. journey, Pope Francis made his feelings about women religious abundantly clear and a cathedral packed with Catholics had a similar chance to send their feelings about the nuns to the pontiff.

"Words without example are of no use! Our witness is that brings and gives validity to our words.”

From A Nun's Life podcasts - Who are your favorite women in Scripture?

Verbum Dei Missionary Fraternity was founded, in 1963, based on the common mission that all baptized people are to listen to the word of God and to preach it; and that women must have a more relevant role in the church. In the case or our community, which is composed of three branches (consecrated women, consecrated men and priests and married couples consecrated according to their state of life), the president of the whole can be a member of the female branch.

From the Sept. 24 Vespers - Pope Francis has poignantly thanked U.S. Catholic women religious — until recently the subject of two controversial Vatican investigations — for their work in building and maintaining the church throughout the country.

Sr. Chantal Vu Thi Tho, 81, is a Saint Paul de Chartres nun who has served as director of Son Ca Center for orphans and children with physical disabilities based in Hue City, central Vietnam, since 1991 when she got government permission to reopen it. She asked for funds from foreign benefactors and built new facilities that now freely house 65 children served by four sisters and 10 workers.

Commentary -  Were you not, like me, proud the first five U.S. citizens Pope Francis greeted as he stepped off his Alitalia flight from Havana were African-American? On U.S. soil for the first time, the pope met President Barack Obama; his wife, Michelle; their daughters, Malia and Sasha; and Michelle's mother, Marian Robinson. How society has changed.

Pope Francis made an unscheduled visit to a U.S. community of Catholic women religious that has been fighting against an Obama administration mandate covering contraceptives in health care plans, the Vatican spokesman said late Sept. 23.