Rhina Guidos

The bishop leading the U.S. Catholic Church's response on migration issues said that both major political parties are participating in anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. 

Miguel Flores was among 222 Nicaraguans forcibly removed from the country in 2023 and brought to the U.S. A year later, with support from parishioners at Washington's Holy Trinity Catholic Church, he is talking more about the experience.

El Salvador's president, who has waged a war against criminal gangs that has imprisoned more than 70,000 people, has won a second term. Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez spoke of St. Oscar Romero interceding for the country.

Following record-breaking crossings of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, sisters and church leaders call for Christian empathy for those fleeing their homes all over the world. 

With their ministries and presence in towns that continue to suffer from Colombia's 50-year-long conflict, nuns contribute to the peace process through accompaniment.

Latin American Catholic leaders and groups are lining up to support a Guatemalan cardinal rumored to be a target for arrest after voicing fears that a coup may prevent Guatemala's president-elect from being sworn in. 

In welcoming attendees of CLAR's IV Latin American and Caribbean Congress of Religious Life, CLAR president Sr. Liliana Franco Echeverri said that "our structures are in need of renewal," because "there are structures that suffocate and ways of proceeding that deny what is human."

Contemplative sisters participate in the Synod of Bishops from afar through prayer.

Even as Catholic women take a historic step as voting members of the Synod of Bishops, former Irish President Mary McAleese slammed the Vatican Oct. 13 in a parallel gathering in Rome calling for more equality for women.

Two Catholic sisters taking part in Pope Francis' summit on the church's future told GSR the synod is different than expected. "I'm experiencing and witnessing the dismantling of the hierarchical," said Mercy Sr. Angela Perez.

Sr. Patricia Murray said that Pope Francis' process for the synod on synodality is helping "shift the feeling that the truth resides at the top of the hierarchy."

The increase in migration has shelters along the route at capacity, but places such as CAFEMIN in Mexico City, run by the Josephine sisters, are among the few stops where migrants are still welcomed, despite overcrowding.

Advocates for women's ordination in the Catholic Church hosted a prayer vigil at one of Rome's historic basilicas on Oct. 3, on the eve of Pope Francis' opening of a major Vatican summit expected to consider whether women might serve as Catholic deacons or priests.

Sr. Maria Cimperman described Pope Francis' reimagined process for the Oct. 4-29  Synod of Bishops as a "walking together," even if prelates still hold the majority of votes.  

At an event organized by the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean Religious, sisters shared experiences of helping victims and other work against human trafficking, a "profound violence to the body of humanity."

Guatemalans tired of institutional political parties on Aug. 20 elected Bernardo Arévalo, a former diplomat who had little chance of winning two months ago, as their next president.

Jesuit communities worldwide are condemning the actions of the Nicaraguan government after police ordered a community of priests from the Company of Jesus to leave their private residence Aug. 19 in the capital of Managua.

The archbishop of El Salvador's capital city announced Aug. 6 that a canonization process has begun for a group of martyrs killed during the country's bloody civil war, including Jesuit Fr. Ignacio Ellacuría, the rector of the Catholic university who was murdered in 1989.

 El padre franciscano Brendan Forde, un misionero irlandés que vivió algunos de los conflictos más turbulentos de América Latina del siglo XX, incluso la dictadura militar en Chile y la guerra en El Salvador, murió el 8 de julio en Irlanda.

Franciscan Fr. Brendan Forde, an Irish missionary who lived through some of the most turbulent conflicts of 20th century Latin America, including a military dictatorship in Chile and the war in El Salvador, died July 8 in his native Ireland.