Maria Magdalena Bennásar (Magda) of the Sisters for Christian Community is from Spain. Studies in theology gave her a foundation for the charism of prayer and ministry of the word with an emphasis on spirituality and Scripture: teaching, conducting retreats and workshops, creating community and training lay leaders in Australia, the U.S. and Spain. Currently, she is working on eco-spirituality and searching for a space to create a center or collaborate with others.
Sandra Wiafewa Agyeman (Ofia) is a Ghanaian member of the Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit. She began her ministry in a school in Ghana as an account clerk, helping with registration and admission. Later ministries there included pastoral work with people living with HIV/AIDS; ensuring their children's education; and organizing prayer experiences and recollections. For the past year, she has been attending the Institute of Formation and Religious Studies in the Philippines.
Mary Elizabeth Looby has been a Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart for 52 years. With an academic background in pastoral care and counseling, and training in spiritual direction, she has been a spiritual director and retreat director for over 35 years. She served on her congregation's Leadership Council, and currently lives in Philadelphia, where she does spiritual direction and retreat ministry.
Carol Schuck Scheiber is an independent writer and editor in Ohio whose major focus for many years has been on Catholic vocations and related topics.
by Rekha Kerketta
Contributor
July 23, 2019
My journey to religious life has had many unique hurdles. I am from an aboriginal tribe called Kurukh and only learned to read and write in sixth grade. We were fortunate to have a government school at the Catholic mission in Hazaribag, 40 kilometers away from our village, but instruction was in Hindi, which I did not speak.
by Joyce Meyer
International Liaison, Global Sisters Report
July 23, 2019
At the Women of Wisdom and Action colloquium, I met Sr. Rashmi Kanta Kiro, who belongs to the Daughters of St. Anne, Ranchi, the first congregation in India founded by tribal women. One of the first two female tribal doctoral students in India, Rashmi is carrying on their revolutionary charism.
by Cecilia A. Ranger
July 22, 2019
Mary Magdalene has gotten a lot of bad press, it seems to me. Every July 22, on her feast day, I dread listening to homilies at church; in Scripture study groups, I shudder at the accusations against her.
by Michele Morek
July 22, 2019
GSR Today - As a group, millipedes have survived mass extinctions that killed off dominant organisms like trilobites and dinosaurs. Will our smaller individual religious community groups similarly last for millennia?
This story appears in the LCWR 2019 feature series. View the full series.
July 22, 2019
Religious life in the United States and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious are changing. But St. Joseph Sr. Carol Zinn is uniquely prepared to lead an organization facing transformation. "I believe in this life, and I believe it is critical to the furthering of the Gospel," she says, but "the expression of the life is taking on a whole new form."
Rekha Kerketta, from the Hazaribagh District of Jharkhand, India, is a member of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. With an undergraduate degree in Hindustani classical music and graduate work in religious studies, she has taught Hindi and English in various schools and is a visiting professor in Feminist Theology at the Regional Theologate Jesuit Center, Arunodaya, Ranchi. Presently she is completing a doctorate degree at St. Albert's College, Ranchi, Jharkhand, about dissertation on the role of Christian Kurukh women in the church in Chotanagpur.