Many different kinds of peace lines still crisscross Belfast city and suburbs. Even now, 15 years into the Northern Ireland peace process, these walls show little sign of coming down. While politicians occasionally raise the question of removing them, dialogue at the local level has not succeeded in promoting the mutual trust necessary to overcome cross-community nervousness. A whole generation of people born and raised practically next door to each other have never met or socialized together. And so many still have misgivings about dismantling the trappings of deadly past hostility. Living on such an interface continues to be challenging.

Dominican Sr. Trish Madigan has spent most of her life studying interfaith and intercultural relationships. She’s currently the director of the Dominican Centre for Interfaith Ministry, Education and Research in Sydney, Australia – and before that, she spent 15 years as the director of the Sydney archdiocese’s office of ecumenical and interfaith relations. Madigan has a doctorate in Arabic and Islamic studies from the University of Sydney, and she’s written extensively on the lives of Muslim and Catholic women, including the 2011 text Women and Fundamentalism in Islam and Catholicism. This month, Madigan chatted with Global Sisters Report about the importance of interfaith dialogue and women in religious traditions.

GSR Today - Young people get a lot of flak for being obsessed with their phones, and there’s certainly some merit in that. There are a lot of unhealthy device-driven behaviors. What we can’t forget is that carrying instantaneous access to the world in the palm of your hand is powerful and can do a lot of good. Think about the international organizations that have already been mobilized in Nepal, or the people who were able to “check in” and quickly get news of their conditions to anxious family and friends.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - "I decided not to enter religious life but want to stay in touch with the nuns. Or will that be too awkward?"

The month-long Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons opens at the United Nations April 27. Sr. Mary Ann McGivern, a member of the Sisters of Loretto who served on her order's Committee for Peace, joined a delegation with Pax Christi in the days leading to the conference. McGivern told CNS her community has proposed that the U.S. enact a unilateral nuclear weapons ban. "We're saying that no matter what the rest of the world does, it's time for the United States to set aside our nuclear weapons," she explained. While it is unlikely that any proposal for quick action on a ban will find its way into the U.N. conference's final report, McGivern said she hopes the idea will begin to percolate among the delegates.

As Global Sisters Report celebrates our one-year anniversary, we are also celebrating the connections we have made with sisters in Africa. While in Kenya in January, I ran two writing workshops for more than 100 sisters. Here is an insightful reflection from one of the sisters who participated. You can read more of sisters' work from these sessions here at the Writing Workshop series page.

The Catholic church in Vietnam has both survived persecution and grown in faith during the past four decades, since the fall of the Saigon government, on April 30, 1975. After the North communist army captured Saigon, the capital of a U.S.-backed South Vietnam, and reunified the country, the Hanoi government confiscated and shut down religious facilities – including schools, hospitals, churches and other properties – and began a program aimed at strictly controlling all religious activities. Since then, slowly, the Hanoi communist-led government has continued to open to the needs of local religious, and formation activities are becoming stronger.

Congress has a responsibility to create federal budgets that are both morally and economically responsible – budgets that address the needs of all, not just the moneyed few. A group of interfaith leaders are briefing congressional staff this week, speaking about how our government should function – decision-making based on respect, engagement in respectful dialogue, and creatively working toward mutually beneficial solutions.

GSR Today - Migrants are being held hostage by kidnappers at the U.S.-Mexico border; Appalacian coal mining affects all of us in advance of Pope Francis's upcoming encyclical on the environment; and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences is taking steps to become active – not just academic – especially in the prevention of human trafficking and modern-day slavery.