Light streams through the ancient stained glassed windows into the silent chapel. Quiet figures steady their wavering bodies, grasping the familiar chair, coming to rest in the hallowed space. Ready, ready are the pure white cloths, the corporal in its chaste folds, the cup, golden in the morning sun, the sisters in their irrevocable places. Slowly they gather, these women of the Lord.

Three days before her ordination as Kansas City's first woman priest, Georgia Walker sat in the storefront office of Journey to New Life, the organization she co-founded in 2013 to help people in the city re-enter civilian life after incarceration. Looking out on Troost Avenue, a street long considered the line in Kansas City's racial divide, Walker pondered the line she was about to cross. Having previously been arrested and tried in federal court for protesting nuclear weapons, Walker is no stranger to controversy. Yet, she said she was somewhat surprised by the celebrity incurred by her decision to be ordained by the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests.

"I am in awe of God’s intimate closeness and enduring faithfulness."

GSR Today - A banner year for women's issues in journalism, 2014 brought forward into the cultural conversation this basic fact: As human beings, women are worthy of respect in every aspect of life. No caveats. No questions. No debate. We didn’t phrase it quite so overtly here at GSR, but in essence, we’ve spent every day since our April launch saying exactly that.

You can take Benedictine Sr. Belinda Monahan out of the dig site, but good luck getting the dirt out from under her fingernails. Monahan, 44, is an archeologist who works part-time as a research associate at the University of Chicago and professed her final vows last month.

Since she retired six years ago, 91-year-old Sr. Maura Brannick has certainly had more time to reflect on her ministry as a Holy Cross sister and as a nurse. She stays connected to the award-winning medical clinic for the poor and uninsured that she founded in 1986 in South Bend, Indiana. On many Mondays, she still catches a ride downtown to Western and Chapin Streets to visit with the largely volunteer staff and write thank you notes to clinic donors.
Read about the clinic Sr. Brannick started - Committed to care

Sisters’ clinic provides for patients who have no insurance, public or private - For decades, Sr. Maura Brannick had worked as a nurse in hospitals sponsored by her Holy Cross congregation. In 1986, Brannick followed her heart. She went to the board of the Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center to ask for help funding and running a clinic in the Chapin Street neighborhood. She pledged to work hard to get donations and equipment for the clinic. She promised to recruit volunteers from the many doctors and nurses she knew. Today the Sister Maura Brannick, CSC, Health Center serves about 1,300 people.
Related - Reach out in justice and love

For the first time in its history, California has a Catholic sister as chaplain of the state’s senate. Mercy Sr. Michelle Gorman was named to the post on Dec. 22 by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León.

Sr. Mary Rosita Shiosee is a striking example of Catholic faith prospering in the indigenous communities of this land, where church history has been marked by ups and downs. She was born, baptized and confirmed in Jemez Pueblo, 60 miles away as the crow files, and spent time as a girl in the village of Mesita in Laguna Pueblo. While visiting homebound people in Mesita, Shiosee looks out over the village's surrounding landscape. It is wild and barren now, but she remembers it as fertile ground, where the pueblo once tended fields of wheat, alfalfa, corn, chilies and other vegetables. "As children, early in the morning after the dew had settled on the dirt, we would go out and turn the dirt over. That's how we would water the plants."