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.

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.

See for Yourself - When is a typo not a mistake? When it leads you to a higher meaning. 

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."

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.