Since 2001, the Sisters of St. Francis, Sylvania, have had a working presence in Haiti, helping with basics like water and healthcare and gaining partners along the way. Sr. Josephine Dybza: “We must be a discerning presence. We get other people to buy in so we can continue to help. It isn’t so much what we’re doing there that matters. It’s that we’re opening the door for others to help.”

“My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori.”

GSR Today - I don’t normally play games on my phone, so the last week has been an informative experience; Sr. Kathleen Bryant wrote about detoxing in the digital age last week. In describing the pervasiveness of the Internet, Bryant talks about feeling drained at the end of a long day, yet somehow managing to muster up the energy to check email anyway.

The 2014 Leadership Conference of Women Religious assembly will take place Aug. 12-15 in Nashville, Tenn. Our coverage of the 2014 assembly can be found here. Below are links to National Catholic Reporter's and Global Sisters Report's previous LCWR news coverage to help you prepare.

From A Nun's Life podcasts - Sr. Elizabeth Johnson talks about a theology of Mary and how ideas about Mary have changed over time.

Sister of Notre Dame Susan Kusz has spent the last two decades working in retreat and sabbatical ministry. She has served as the retreat center director for the Sisters of Notre Dame’s Toledo province, and she also spent 10 years on staff at Sangre de Cristo, a New Mexico-based sabbatical center for women and men religious. Kusz is currently a spiritual director and retreat director at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, Pa., where she works with ecumenical lay people.

On NCRonline.org - U.S. women religious leaders face an uncertain future as they gather Aug. 12-16 in Nashville, Tenn., for their annual assembly. More than 800 elected congregational leaders will discuss how they plan to react to continued charges of infidelity leveled by the church's top enforcer of orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as well as to the congregation's plans to take over the organization after the assembly. The gathering will be the third consecutive Leadership Conference of Women Religious assembly in which church infighting overshadows the business of the conference.

Like the founders of religious congregations in the United States, the women entering today in their 20s, 30s and 40s are characterized by faith and courage. Women currently entering religious life are brave risk-takers, since almost nothing in our culture encourages their choice.