This story appears in the Advent feature series. View the full series.
by GSR Staff
December 5, 2014
"O Compassionate God, open our hearts and minds to prepare us for your son's coming."
This story appears in the Sisters Making Mainstream Headlines feature series. View the full series.
December 5, 2014
GSR Today - What a strange mix of headlines we have this week, from the serious to the seriously disturbed, from people robbing women religious in real life to TV nuns smacking kids for giggles. But I’m not laughing.
This story appears in the Apostolic Visitation feature series. View the full series.
December 5, 2014
News that the report of the Vatican’s Apostolic Visitation to U.S. women religious will be released Dec. 16 was seen Thursday by most observers as good news. The visitation, one of two separate investigations of U.S. women religious launched by different Vatican offices in recent years, when it was announced in 2009 sparked protest from both the women and lay people throughout the country who said it was based on unfair and unfounded judgments about the women's lives.
Related - U.S. sisters' apostolic visitation report to be released Dec. 16
by Susan Rose Francois
NCR Contributor
December 5, 2014
One of the first questions people asked me, repeatedly, when I revealed the surprising news that I was making the radical choice to live a life of poverty, celibacy and obedience as a Catholic sister, was some variation on this theme: "Do you have to wear one of those things on your head?" I will be honest. This was annoying, frustrating, and sad.
Regina Siegfried is a member of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, an international community with U.S. regional offices in St. Louis. She teaches inter-community women novices at Aquinas Institute in St. Louis and coordinates RCIA at her urban parish, St. Vincent de Paul, where she is also one of the "sewing ladies" who mend backpacks and clothing of low-income and homeless guests who come to the parish for meals.
This story appears in the Apostolic Visitation feature series. View the full series.
December 4, 2014
The Vatican will be releasing the results of one of its controversial and contentious investigations of U.S. women religious at a press briefing in December, a priest who assists the Vatican's press office has said. Basilian Fr. Thomas Rosica said the Vatican will release a report on the investigation, known as an apostolic visitation, Dec. 16.
by GSR Staff
December 4, 2014
"Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
This story appears in the Advent feature series. View the full series.
by Christine Schenk
December 4, 2014
I love Advent. It's such a hopeful and consoling season for those who long to see God's values fully realized "on Earth as in heaven," as Jesus prayed. This is the season of the prophet Isaiah, whose proclamations permeate our liturgies and whose writings inspired both Jesus and St. Paul. We renew our belief in a God who brings "glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives and makes justice and praise spring up before all the nations" (Isaiah 61).
This story appears in the Advent feature series. View the full series.
by Bernadette Flanagan
Contributor
December 4, 2014
As well stirring body, mind and spirit, Advent invites the soul to a new awakening. It is a mystical moment in the annual cycle of liturgical time. An invitation is issued to wait again with hopeful anticipation for the ever new action of God in our world.
December 4, 2014
Sisters utilize agriculture to generate income to sustain their ministry projects - At a hospital in Luweero, Uganda, two hours outside the capital of Kampala, the children are sometimes discharged from the hospital with antibiotics and a female goat. Both the goat and the medicine come from an initiative created by Catholic sisters who noticed that many of the HIV-positive orphans they treated at the Bishop Caesar Asili Hospital were stunted and malnourished.