We traveled three hours by bus northeast from Quito, Ecuador, climbing winding roads up the highlands of the Andes Mountains, past craggy canyons, hillside farms and village settlements. Our destination was Otavalo, at the foot of the Imbabura volcano, where we joined nearly 50 leaders of the emergent “rights of nature” movement for a four-day global summit.

While so many of us worry about the lack of pediatric care in depressed areas of the world, Mercy Sr. Karen Schneider, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, has found a creative, positive way to address children's needs by founding Mercy Medical Missions.

Sr. Camille: When and how did this come about?

During the 2010 Christmas season, the Benedictine sisters of Baltimore found themselves in the midst of a modern-day Christmas story. The sisters were asked to provide shelter to an eight-month-pregnant Muslim woman seeking asylum in the United States.

Amina, a woman from Afghanistan, was forced to flee her home earlier in 2010 because she was pregnant and unmarried and her life was in danger. How she arrived in Baltimore is a mystery to those who helped her, but when she came seeking a place to stay, they knew they had to do something to keep her safe.

A formidable multi-billion-dollar human-trafficking industry has driven Catholic religious women to collaborate among themselves and with other sectors of society to stop what Pope Francis has called "the most extensive form of slavery of the 21st century." Since International Union of Superiors General (UISG) established Talitha Kum ("Little girl, arise") in 2009*, the anti-trafficking network of women religious, has developed a program of activities banking on partnerships established by the UISG central office in Rome as well as a network of local anti-trafficking teams.

A growing number of films focusing on the lives of women religious are currently drawing viewer interest.

"The Nuns on the Bus movement sponsored by NETWORK and the [Leadership Conference of Women Religious] dialogue with the Vatican has brought religious women within a secular spotlight and has sparked people's curiosity," said Charity Sr. Rejane Cytacki of Leavenworth, Kan. "Now is a time of renewed interest about how religious sisters live and work."

After Pope Francis entrusted two Vatican academies to study the problem of human trafficking, a group of women religious asked the pope to raise greater awareness in the church about the issue by establishing a worldwide day of prayer and fasting. "The pope was very interested in our suggestion and asked us what date we would like the day to be," Consolata Sr. Eugenia Bonetti told Catholic News Service.

On Sunday, Oct. 13, The Well Spirituality Center in La Grange Park, Ill., released a children's book dedicated to the life of Anne Smedinghoff, one of five Americans killed in a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan in April 2012. The book, titled A Language of the Heart, is the creation of a project between Catholic school children from across the Chicago archdiocese and the Sisters of St. Joseph of La Grange Park.

Salesian Sr. Jennifer Kane said her days are filled with "a whole lot of prayer and study," along with ministry to children. She is looking forward to serving in one or more of the order's specialty areas of staffing schools, retreat centers and campus ministries. Despite her self-described conversion, Kane said she's "not at all" regretful of her military service. She acknowledged that Catholics have widely varying opinions on war – especially when it involves nuclear weapons – but emphasized that she would never relish the thought of putting such weaponry into action.

Dominican Srs. Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte, members of the Jonah House community in Baltimore since 1995, have spent decades crisscrossing the United States opposing war and acting to bring to life the biblical call to "beat swords into plowshares" in symbolically disarming nuclear weapons and other tools of war. Their actions – as feeble as they might seem – have led to countless years in prison.

This is the fifth and final part of a five-part essay by Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sandra Schneiders on the meaning of religious life today. In this part Schneiders, professor of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, offers her conclusions in her essay entitled “Religious Life as Prophetic Life Form.” These essays run from Jan. 4 through Jan. 8.