Some 500 Catholic activists from around the globe will converge on Philadelphia for a three-day conference Sept. 18-20 to press for women's rights in the church. They will meet one week before Pope Francis is set to step foot into the city. The U.S.-based Women's Ordination Conference (WOC) is hosting the Women's Ordination Worldwide meeting. The Women's Ordination Conference formed 40 years back, in 1975, after a group of women's ordination advocates met in Detroit. Women's Ordination Worldwide (WOW), an assembly of international groups supporting women's ordination, formed in 1996; the U.S. group is a member.

Homemade granola and a bilingual greeting welcomed the Nuns on the Bus on their second stop in a 13-city tour of the U.S. centered on bridging divides and transforming the nation's political discourse and direction. After hearing of economic and racial injustices Thursday in St. Louis, the seven women religious on the bus stopped outside St. Anthony Parish in north Kansas City on Friday, Sept. 11, where a crowd approaching 100 people shouted "Welcome, sisters!" in unison but in their native languages. St. Anthony pastor Fr. Paul Turner told the crowd — in English and Spanish — that the church was built in the 1920s largely by Italian immigrant families.

Being Sister Tracy calls me to something challenging and extraordinary. What do you think of when you hear the word “sister?” A sister is family, a confidant perhaps, someone who walks with. Throughout history, women religious have been close to the people, walking beside them through joys and sorrows.

GSR Today - Nuns on the Bus will kick off their 2015 bus tour at the 2-acre Kiener Plaza in St. Louis today at 10 a.m. CDT. Global Sisters Report is here for the tour launch (this post is being written from Busch Stadium, I kid you not), and I’ll be tweeting and reporting this morning to keep you up to date.

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

From A Nun's Life podcasts - How can the Internet connect you to religious life? For one, it  can foster an immediate sense of relationship.

Agnes Nguyen Minh Hanh had an unhappy marriage. Her husband, a heavy drinker and gambler, beat her, sold their house to pay off debts, and abandoned her to live with other women. So she moved back to her own mother’s home and led a lonely life. Her changed, though, when she entered the local Secular Order Discalced Carmelite Community based in Hue City. “I follow St. Teresa of Avila’s spirituality and find peace in my mind,” said the 44-year-old mother who works as a grocer at a local market to support her two children. Hanh is among 100 lay Carmelites working in the Hue archdiocese. They gather weekly at churches to pray, care for patients, visit people who ignore practicing the faith and serve at funerals.

A star attraction at a recent meeting of moral theologians of Asia here was Sr. Vimala Chenginimattam, a member of the Congregation of Mother Carmel, an indigenous order for women. She is the first Indian woman to secure a doctorate in moral theology.

As Social Service Sr. Simone Campbell and the Nuns on the Bus tour bus rolled onto St. Louis' Kiener Plaza on Thursday, a crowd of about 70 people — many women religious — began to cheer. The cheers continued as Campbell emerged from the bus to kick off the 2015 tour, the latest iteration of what has become Campbell's annual tradition of traveling the country talking to people. "What a treat it is to be here in St. Louis with our very subtle bus," she joked when she reached the microphone. But then her tone turned serious as she described St. Louis as a symbol of both the darkness and the light of the United States.

There is a restless peace among women religious. The Vatican and the congregations of women religious in the United States have completed the apostolic visitation process initiated by the Vatican. Some people will continue to debate the terms of the settlement between LCWR and CDF, but sisters are moving to other issues. Sisters were passionately involved in other issues before and during and these events. But before we squander this moment, it would be a loss not to seek its fullest meanings, its learnings. What can we discover in these events? What we will take with us from this crucible? How do we navigate an environment relatively free from conflict between the official church and women religious in the United States?