As the movie "Spotlight" comes to a close, something other than the credits flash up on the screen: a long list of dioceses around the country and the world that have been consumed by clergy sexual abuse scandals and cover-ups. The list goes on for pages and, sitting in a theater Thanksgiving weekend, on the eve of the beginning of Advent, a silence hung over the crowd.

COP21 Paris - As the penultimate day of the Paris climate summit drew to a close Friday, Dec. 11, chants could be heard from one of the forum areas in the center of the public Climate Generations space adjacent to the official COP21 site: "Black Lives Matter!" "One-point-five to stay alive!" "Keep the oil in the soil!"

COP21 Paris - Outside the main venue here at COP21, as diplomats inside waited to receive the latest draft of a potential global climate deal, Mercy Sr. Aine O’Connor stood surrounded by a throng of environmental activists eager to hear what she had to say. “We are hearing and heeding the cry of persons and earth impacted by fracking,” she said of peoples in Argentina, Australia and the U.S. who have reached out to the Sisters of Mercy.

"Living in overcrowded tents, dependant on others for aid. We ask not for a kingdom but for a home!"

In 1973, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta sent seven Missionaries of Charity brothers from India to then-Saigon at the request of the local archbishop; and they cared for homeless people until they left the city in 1975, when communist forces took control at the end of the Vietnam War. A few years later a group of seven Catholic women and formed the Missionaries of Christ's Charity, and its members have been serving the poor, sick and elderly there ever since.

At the halfway mark of my chemotherapy treatment course I find myself in the middle of Advent. I have a lot of time on my hands during this December which is so busy for most people. My mind is going but my body is not. I think about the Advent theme of waiting.

See for Yourself - Every day I have the privilege of working with graduate students who want to become health services administrators. Recently I received an email request from the individual who heads a local group advocating for workplace equality for women.

Three Stats and a Map - The shooting in San Bernardino on Dec. 2 was one in a heartbreakingly long line of mass shootings the U.S. has seen in recent years. The trend has spurred debates about gun control laws, due to the troubling fact that many mass shooters obtained weapons legally.

Sr. Mercy Kariuki, the director of the Tumaini Center Hostel in Nairobi, Kenya, talks about what it’s like to run a hostel that is also a central meeting point for sisters across East Africa