"Our present human community is hungering for transcendence, to evolve to a new level of life that is more unified, peaceful and collaborative."

In 1996 Sr. Mary Consolata Bui Thi Bong was a pioneer in joining hands with local followers of Buddhism, Protestantism and Cao Dai, a syncretic belief system founded in Vietnam, to serve people living with HIV/AIDS through a project funded by Norway-based Nordic Assistance to Vietnam (NAV). Now local Catholics and Buddhists still cooperate with one another on giving material and spiritual support to people with HIV/AIDS.

GSR Today via NCR Today - Dominican Sr. Donna Markham has been selected the new president of Catholic Charities USA, the national office for Catholic Charities agencies nationwide. Markham succeeds Fr. Larry Snyder, the current president, on June 1.

"I am as the insects, who dart between the rays of Light falling through the trees. . . ."

GSR Today - Iraqi refugees in Jordan keeping their Christian faith strong, Boko Haram's most recent massacre, and some good news about Haiti's continued recovery from the Jan. 2010 earthquake.

GSR: we're sharing this story with you again - Sisters from various communities work together to provide trafficking prevention and rehabilitation services for women who migrate to Italy, usually from Africa. While secular NGOs run shelters in Italy as well, Sr. Eugenia Bonetti emphasizes that, for sisters, working with the women is “their life.” They aren’t simply staff who rotate in and out with each shift, but people who come to know the women deeply.

Yes, you the Great Generation of religious life – to you all I write today. First, I share my most sincere and profound gratitude. Thank you, thank you all. You may not know this, but your lives were the first catechism of my generation – yes, your lives! Your attempts, your quest for meaning and purpose, your questions, your guitar, your commitment to peace and justice, your new liturgies, your folk music, your theology, your poetry, your art. Your lives were indeed our first theology.

"We all flow from one fountain Soul. All are expressions of one Love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but . . . ."

I am in the woods on Mount Subasio above Assisi, Italy, at a sacred place of prayer called La Carceri. It’s July 20, 2014. I am on a pilgrimage, thrilled to be praying in this holy place where St. Francis and the early friars spent much time in contemplation. I too am in contemplation on this holy ground. I am pondering what I just heard preached during the Mass, where our Franciscan pilgrimage group gathered around a stone altar underneath some tall trees.

GSR Today - The new year is off to a quiet start in most places except for Ireland, where a story concerning a religious order and a notorious pedophile priest has ruled headlines in recent days.