GSR Today - In early July Region XI of LCWR held a bi-annual conference for all the sisters of Minnesota, South and North Dakota and Wyoming. Tom Fox and I were invited to plan a day-long program around the new NCR project: Global Sisters Report, and we were excited over their enthusiasm. The sisters also wanted practical ways they could make connections between themselves and Global South sisters.

Inspired by Nicaraguan refugees attending the high school where Dominican Sister of Hope Debbie Blow served as campus minister, the group went to repair damage caused by Hurricane Mitch. Almost two decades later, Blow is now the co-founder and executive director of North Country Mission of Hope, a “humanitarian, spiritually based” organization providing education and community development in Nicaragua. She talked with GSR about the current wave of child migrants to the U.S.

GSR Today - Readers have been asking us about the Dominican Sisters in Iraq, concerned about their safety. They have been posting updates to their website.

Analysis - Traveling through South Korea for five days, Pope Francis will be hard pressed to meet local challenges. He will be called to offer greater meaning to the nation's young people plagued by consumerism, fresh hope to its economically marginalized, encouragement to tired peacemakers, and reconciliation within a fragmented society seemingly searching for a 21st-century identity and a path forward.

If we cannot create a new sisterhood, global sorority will only be a phrase, not a living reality. To do so, what would happen if a meeting were as slow as a long gaze? This long gaze would bring quietness of mind.

See for Yourself - Global Sisters Report welcomes a new weekly blogger to the site, Sr. Nancy Linenkugel, a Sister of St. Francis of Sylvania who serves as administration department chair of Xavier University Health Services and directs the graduate program in health services administration there.

Sr. Simone Campbell, a Sister of Social Service, was in Kansas City, Mo., last night to talk about her organization, NETWORK, and what she believes are the nation’s toughest issues: primarily the growing wealth gap and the need for Medicaid expansion in every state. Speaking to a crowd of about 500 to 600 people at Community Christian Church, Campbell deplored the economic and political policies in the United States that she says explicitly hurt the poor and benefit the rich.

Not too long ago, the world barely noticed nuns, and then only in some anonymous or stereotypical way. Now there is hardly an instance when the world does not notice them. The irony is palpable. When we looked like "nuns," we weren't seen. Now that we look simply like ourselves, everybody sees everything we do. Clearly, witness is at least as powerful as uniforms. And nuns have given clear witness to contemplation, equality, and justice these last years.