Thomas Scaria

Twelve women religious congregations in Sri Lanka have come together to address human trafficking, unsafe migration and exploitation of women and children in the island nation.

Five years after a terrorist attack killed at least 270 people and wounded 500 more on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka, the church initiated the process of declaring the victims as "heroes of faith." 

Sisters of secular institutes in India spearhead ministries that offer a better future to children who have been living in the streets or found at bus stations, offering shelter, education and later placing them in job training.

As India prepares to elect a new federal government, its Catholic bishops have urged citizens "to vote wisely" to help the country remain a secular and democratic republic. 

The Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross manage Jyothi Seva, a school for the visually impaired in Bengaluru, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Jyothi Seva helps students to discover their dignity and value.

Salesian Sisters run one of the few rehabilitation centers that treat  women with substance abuse addictions in India. 

As violence continues in Manipur, India, sisters care for children in refugee camps while continuing their ministry of looking after orphaned and abandoned children in their Homes of Hope shelters.

The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ in Bengaluru, India, educate children who would otherwise be working with their nomadic parents in garbage segregation units, in waste picking or at construction sites.

As a dispute over how to celebrate the liturgy embroils India's Syro-Malabar Church — one of the Catholic Church's Eastern Catholic churches  — sisters continue parish ministries and holding catechism classes.

Sisters in India run the Sree Jeevan Jyothi Vocational Junior College, where several students are victims of failed child marriages. At the junior college, they train as nurses, receive counseling and develop confidence.

Hundreds of women have found a fresh start in a shelter managed by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Tarbes in Bengaluru, Karnataka state, India. The nuns counsel residents, provide them therapy and offer room and board.

"We cannot be silent when the country is burning with divisive forces everywhere," Sr. Maria Nirmalini, head of the Conference of Religious India, said in a letter to more than 130,000 nuns, priests and brothers.

More than two years after bombs killed more than 300 people in Sri Lanka, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said the government's slow investigation delays justice for the victims and survivors. Army personnel now guard two Catholic churches attacked on Easter 2019, and some people remain fearful of going to church.

Churches in the Archdiocese of Colombo, Sri Lanka, resumed Sunday Masses on May 12, three weeks after a series of bomb blasts killed hundreds. Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith repeatedly reasserted that the church does not consider Muslims as enemies of Christians.