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."

GSR Today - It seemed at times as if 2014 was the Year of Ebola. It wasn’t, of course – it was also the year of the Synod on the Family, in which the divisions over the future of the Catholic church seemed to be laid bare, the year of the apostolic visitation, in which that question seemed to be answered, and myriad other topics – but Ebola stood out.

Almost a year ago, three U.S. Dominican Sisters journeyed to Iraq to visit the Iraqi Dominican community and the Iraqi people displaced by war and terrorism. Here are some of their thoughts before they set out.

It’s the second day of 2015, which means that after having stuffed our faces for a few weeks, everybody is talking about getting thin. It happens each January without fail. Do we still believe that smaller jeans will somehow lead to a fuller life? How urgently our souls need a different resolution! It’s time to imagine a new kind of “getting thin.”

“Stand up and go; your faith has made you well.”