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

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.

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.

"Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

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).

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.

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.

Before Brown v. Board of Education mandated the integration of America’s schools, Sinsinawa Dominican Sr. Patty Caraher taught at an all-black high school in the Mobile, Ala. As she puts it, she was naïve when she arrived, thinking she would sweep into the Deep South and teach her students how to survive in the “white world.”