GSR Today - Over the weekend, an email circulating through a Franciscan sister network made its way to GSR. Attached was a dispatch from the Maroua-Mokolo diocese in northern Cameroon where, reportedly, Boko Haram has made inroads.

Sr. Pauline Longwani, a part of the Franciscan Sisters of Assisi congregation, recently returned from six years of missionary work in Italy. Originally from the Copperbelt parish in northern Zambia, Longwani is now living in Solwezi and waiting for her teaching certification to be approved by the local education board.

A cherished dream came true for me when I was appointed to work in India’s northeastern region after my final vows with the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit in 2005. Cultures have always fascinated me, and northeastern India, I was told, was a melting pot of races and cultures. I had expressed my desire to study anthropology while in the novitiate. My superiors must have kept that in mind while deciding postings for the newly professed members.

The Obama administration's policy of detaining women and children seeking asylum in the U.S. could soon end after a federal judge tentatively ruled that the practice violates a previous court settlement, according to attorneys representing plaintiffs in the case. Issued April 24 by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in California, the proposed ruling says that the detention policy violates the 1997 Flores v. Meese Settlement Agreement, which states that unaccompanied minors cannot be placed in restrictive lockdown facilities. Attorneys representing both sides have 30 days to reach an agreement on how to wind down family detention, according to two memos obtained by NCR.

GSR Today - Knowing where to send help during disasters; lessons from Baltimore in how to look at ourselves first; and growing reports about the unintended consequences of World Bank projects on people whose livelihood and home are subsumed by development projects.

I was born in the year that the U.S. dropped the first nuclear bombs. Now the United Nations is reviewing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. What does Christ call me to do in the face of all the suffering that has come in the nuclear age? In the history of civilization, wars have ended, then resources were again used for human need rather than human destruction. Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the human family has been seduced by idols of weapons. The bombs were not the end of a war, but the beginning of the escalating cycle taking resources from human needs.  

Founded in 1964, Institute Mater Dei is the Indian church’s answer to the Second Vatican Council call to empower women religious through formation programs. It aimed to equip Catholic women religious to face modern challenges and help them find relevance and joy in their vocation. With the motto “Grow into the fullness of Christ,” the theology school has graduated more than 5,000 sisters who have gone on to play critical leadership roles in Asia and Africa. One of them, Sr. Bindu Paul, said, “I entered the institute as an empty vessel to be filled in, and God touched me and I have grown."

NCR Editorial - It seems, in what can be gleaned from the final report of the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, that a certain reasonableness ultimately prevailed in an exercise that has rightfully been called "a disaster."

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Nepal, a Catholic sister in Louisville, Kentucky, is doing her part to bring clean water to the impacted areas. Ursuline Sr. Larraine Lauter sprang into action shortly after seeing footage of the magnitude-7.8 earthquake that struck a mountainous region near the capital city of Kathmandu on April 25. Worried how contaminated water could exacerbate the death toll, Lauter, founder of Water with Blessings, began reaching out to contacts to see how she could help.

 “To the degree that we are present to ourselves, we are in the very same act present to and with the Greater Than Self.”