This story appears in the Apostolic Visitation feature series. View the full series.

When Mother Mary Clare Millea, the apostolic visitator to U.S. women religious, took the microphone at the press conference presenting the visitation’s final report, her address proved just how emotional the three-year visitation process had been. Holding back tears, she thanked the report’s authors – Cardinal João Bráz de Aviz and Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo – for hearing sisters’ voices and concerns.

Three Stats and a Map - Christmas means many things to many people. Christians worldwide celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day, while for others, the holiday season is about Santa Claus, presents and caroling. But whatever Christmas means to you, chances are you aren’t alone. Last year, the Pew Research’s religion and public life project outlined the ways Americans celebrate Christmas.

This story appears in the Nuns on the Bus feature series. View the full series.

In 2012, filmmaker Melissa Regan read about the Nuns on the Bus in the newspaper. It was the first she’d ever heard of Sr. Simone Campbell or NETWORK, but she was intrigued. She called Campbell and within a few weeks, she was on a plane, headed to Iowa to film the first Nuns on the Bus tour. Regan and her camera have been on every tour since, and she’s planning to release a feature-length documentary called "Nuns on the Bus: The Movie."

This story appears in the Apostolic Visitation feature series. View the full series.

by Margaret J. Wheatley

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The Vatican report on the Apostolic Visitation has been well-received by LCWR and the many orders that were visited during this process. I have walked with the sisters during these years of the investigatory processes initiated by the Vatican prior to Pope Francis. The perspectives I offer here are based on my work in the field of leadership for over 40 years, and my unending appreciation of the sisters. One of the key predictors of an organization's future fate is how it deals with crises.

Dr. Sr. Mary Virginia Annel works to prevent the proliferation of HIV/AIDS in a tiny Central American country that is still rebounding from a 12-year civil war that took 75,000 lives. Beginning as an Archdiocesan team, now a non-profit foundation, Annel’s group grew to number 20 social workers, communicators, pastoral accompaniers of the afflicted and 250 volunteers. Soon CONTRASIDA was reaching 40,000 people a year with classes, literature and workshops for teachers and others who might “multiply” correct information.

GSR Today - There have been numerous reports about the issues of detaining families who fled violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to seek asylum in the United States, from how they’re often deported before they get the hearing American law says they are entitled to, to how they’re being held in what critics say is essentially a prison. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit hoping to stop the process.