See for Yourself - The other day I was engaged in an exuberant conversation with a friend. Our topic was how we preserved our shoes. It might as well have been about how a bill becomes a law, as exciting as that probably sounds. She took a relatively brief approach, saying things like she isn't hard on shoes but instead her shoes last forever. 

More than two decades ago, Van Kieu ethnic minority villagers in the Dakrong District of Quang Tri Province, central Vietnam, traditionally buried babies alive together with their dead mothers as they believed the babies could be breastfed in the afterlife. They observed the custom of leaving dead bodies in forests at sunset and then running home for fear that the souls of the dead would follow them and cause more suffering. They also followed the practice of marriage between close kin as “connecting the family line.” Now they have abandoned these outdated customs, thanks to Sr. Josephine Anna Tran Thi Hien of the Lovers of the Holy Cross of Hue, who has saved more than 100 children from these practices.

"Nature is not 'mere' property to be owned and exploited."

Almost 40 years of conflict in the province, with an even longer historical build-up, could be expected to have marked people and communities deeply. A research question had been circulated before our meeting: Were women torn between the expectations of their local churches and those of the paramilitaries within their own communities?

GSR Today - Farmers in Peru win against big copper, for now; immigration policy in the U.S. is still murky; and others are picking up on Sr. Simone Campbell's call for public policy, including taxation, to be guided by beliefs.

The House for Men and a House for Families at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago’s Hyde Park opened May 1, 2014. Each is now home to about a dozen people either waiting for final permission to stay in the United States or who do have permission and are learning how to live here – getting training or going to school, finding jobs and saving money for somewhere to live. They are a ministry of Interfaith Committee for Detained Immigrants, which was formed in 2007 by two Sisters of Mercy, Sr. JoAnn Persch and Sr. Pat Murphy.

Declaring four 19th-century women religious saints, Pope Francis said they are models for all Christians of how faith, nourished in prayer, is expressed concretely in acts of charity and the promotion of unity. The new saints, proclaimed during a Mass May 17 in St. Peter's Square, included two Palestinians – Sts. Marie-Alphonsine, founder of the Rosary Sisters, and Mary of Jesus Crucified, a Melkite Carmelite – as well as French St. Jeanne Emilie de Villeneuve and Italian St. Maria Cristina Brando.

It’s been a month since the Vatican quietly ended its controversial oversight of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. With no press conference and little fanfare, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and LCWR issued a joint statement on April 16 announcing the fulfillment of the 2012 mandate for LCWR reform. And then they went silent.
Additional coverage: Q & A with Sr. Sharon Holland; LCWR evaluates end of mandate by GSR • LCWR statements about doctrinal assessment, 2009-2015 • Timeline of LCWR / CDF interactions 2008-present by NCR

“My actions are my only true belongings.”

The end of the controversial Vatican oversight of the main leadership group of U.S. Catholic sisters was not the result of a particular change in discussions between the women and church prelates but of a three-year growth of "mutual understanding and communion," the leader of the sisters' group has said.