After helping farmers last summer to develop climate-resilient livelihood options in central Vietnam’s Thua Thien Hue province, an area that is particularly vulnerable to effects of extreme weather, local nuns have taken another major step in providing health care to people who have fallen victim to diseases flourishing in new weather conditions.

I was a teen who deeply desired to please God. I remember praying for guidance regarding my attraction to a certain boy. As I prayed, I heard a very intense answer. Like a song stuck in my head on repeat, over and over I heard, “Be a nun.” I tried to ignore this phrase, but it only got louder. I knew it was coming from a very deep, very true part of me.

GSR Today - We’ve all had days where we wanted to just go back to bed and start the day again. Check out what happened in England a few days ago. Now there’s a man in serious need of a do-over.

The first center in the United States dedicated to the study of consecrated life opened Thursday with a symposium on hope and the changing nature of religious life. Missionaries of the Precious Blood Fr. Robert Schreiter, Vatican II professor of theology at Catholic Theological Union, said the school’s Center for the Study of Consecrated Life is launching at the perfect time, because religious institutions are in a period of massive realignment, with severe contraction in some parts of the world and rapid expansion in others.

Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Dorothy Stang’s persistent activism on behalf of Brazil’s poor and the earth is well known to environmental and social justice activists throughout the world. Thursday marks the 10-year anniversary of her death at the hands of hired guns.

In Vietnam, the cultural tradition is for younger relatives to take care of elderly family members, but sometimes people are left old and alone, due to feuds or other circumstances like war or natural disasters. In a country where 26 percent of the population will be over 60 years old by 2050, one congregation is helping 65 older women live with dignity and care. The Mater Pieta sisters operate three residential centers in and near Ho Chi Minh City and currently provide food, companionship and medical and spiritual care to people who would otherwise be homeless.

GSR Today - Bob Hope, Faith Hill, President George Bush and Tom Cruise have never had this problem. Anyone with an easy-to-spell-and-pronounce surname has no idea what the rest of us go through. So it’s likely that on February 13 they won’t be giving a second thought to national “Get a Different Name” day. On this clever day, anyone has the right to change his or her name to whatever they’d like it to be – for 24 hours.

In my research after Vatican II, I looked at the roles seen in the constitutions of religious communities. I found many interesting things, including how sisters completely changed the public attitude towards Catholicism by their Civil War nursing. But I think the most important insight – and the most depressing – had to do with the formal role definitions for nuns that are found in papal decrees that functioned as canon law. It turns out that the basis for the rules that required me to have a companion for my class, and kept me from attending Cardinal Koenig's lecture, dated back to 1298 and medieval Europe!