GSR Today - If you hang out in certain corners of the Internet, last week was all about how anti-woman culture has become. But the one beacon of hope last week, at least for me, was this Global Sisters Report column by Sr. Eucharia Madueke. Madueke writes about gender equality in Southeast Nigeria, and it was a refreshing change of narrative.

New Jersey is home of the latest American saint, a Bayonne-born nun who is to be beatified in Newark next month. The beatification of Sr. Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, who died in 1927 at the age of 26, puts her one step away from formal canonization.

This story appears in the Nuns on the Bus feature series. View the full series.

Nuns on the Bus kicks off its third nationwide tour on Wednesday. Global Sisters Report will be there in Iowa at the start and on the bus for five days. "This new journey is all about supporting the even bigger power of the community of U.S. voters when we all choose to engage."

From 1979 when Sr. Teresita Weind was invited by the pastor to join the parish staff, to preach, to minister, until 1991 when another pastor booted her from the parish for overstepping boundaries set by the archdiocese, she had been in the pulpit at least monthly. She had also led retreats, ministered to the sick and helped Carolan and others create and nurture a racially integrated faith community that continued to encompass both Oak Park and Austin, just as St. Catherine's and St. Lucy's parishes had done for a hundred years.