GSR Today - There is both good news and bad news, but – as is so often the case in South Sudan – the bad news seems to overwhelm the good.

As recent news has shown Pope Francis with Muslim and with Greek Orthodox leaders in Istanbul, I have been thinking of my experiences there. He has heard the Muslim call to prayer, as I have there. A few times between leading study tours with our university students in Turkey and doing some research on peacebuilding through education in Iraq, I have been blessed with the opportunity to make my annual retreat near Istanbul on the island of Beyukada. I had no one to talk to on the island, and I began to feel like the man who was to become Pope John XXIII was talking to me as I walked the streets that he would have walked.

"It is important to allow experience to shape what we believe, even as our belief will eventually shape our experience. Through it all, may the work of God be displayed."

Just ahead of the church’s commemoration of World Day of Peace Jan. 1, Sr. Maureen Catabian, a member of the Good Shepherd Sisters’ Women, Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation team, talked about its efforts toward a just and lasting peace for all, especially for powerless Filipinos. Her enemies are inequality between rich and poor, and injustice, she tells Global Sisters Report. She believes these are the root of the conflict between the government of the Philippines and Communist Party of the Philippines, its New People’s Army of some 4,000 fighters and political allies in the National Democratic Front Philippines.

At Johns Hopkins University Children's Center, Mercy Sr. Karen Schneider – a physician and an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine – is occasionally asked if she is a nun. That may be because of the silver cross she wears over her scrubs or because word has gotten around that "there's a sister at Hopkins." If she tells patients she is a Sister of Mercy, they give her a blank look.

GSR Today - Holiday movies – the last ones run through this weekend – are engineered to conjure warm and fuzzy feelings of love, joy and peace on Earth, goodwill to man and woman. And call me a sucker, but that’s why I love them so. If only, in real life, we could live by those sentiments year-round.

"O God of delight, fill our hearts with wonder-filled stories."

Meet Sr. Celine Saplala OSB, but don’t be misled. She may be small in size but she is certainly big in heart. This Benedictine nun serves as Director of the Institutional Social Action Center for St. Scholastica’s College in Manila. Not only did she extend a warm welcome to us (a group of Catholic teachers from Australia), she has also been welcoming the poor and marginalized into the lives and hearts of her students and faculty. This may not be so extraordinary if not for the fact that St. Scholastica’s College is an exclusive women’s institution for the rich and famous.

GSR Today - Finding a place to celebrate midnight Mass in the Holy Land took years – and it wasn’t in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is struggling to develop tourism in the city, even during the Pope’s visit earlier this year. Poverty and the political situation with Israel have stagnated the city, and the lack of Christmas development for tourists and locals alike is just one example of this. And although I am Jewish, I’ve always loved midnight Mass on Christmas.

Last spring, Lifetime TV began promoting a reality series called “The Sisterhood: Becoming Nuns,” in which five 20-somethings would visit three religious congregations and, at the end of six weeks, decide if they wanted to pursue religious life. When the series premiered at the end of November, it was to mixed reviews. Now that it’s over, the reviews are still mixed, but in the four weeks that it aired, some key themes emerged.