The Franciscan Friars of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, who staff 40 parishes, colleges, soup kitchens, and food centers along the Eastern seaboard as well as supporting groups in Peru and Tokyo, are among a small but growing number of religious groups accepting text-message prayer requests, reports this week’s Preaching the News via an article by Patricia Reaney for Reuters.

TEXT the Franciscans: They'll pray for you.

Their “Text a Prayer Intention to a Franciscan Friar” initiative, described as “faith at your fingertips,” offers a novel way for Catholics to connect with those in religious life. “People are always saying to friars, ‘Can you say a prayer for me?’ or ‘can you remember my mother who has cancer?’ ” said Father David Convertino, the New York-based executive director of development for the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Name Province.

"A lot of people text everything now, even more than email, so why not have people have the ability to ask us to pray for them by texting," Convertino said. The intentions are received on a website and are included collectively in the friars' prayers twice a day and at Mass.

Most of the 325 friars, whose average age is about 60, are comfortable with the technology, said Convertino. "If the pope can tweet, friars can text. We have a friar who is 80 who was texting today.”

A number of communities accept prayer requests on their websites. Are there more out there who accept texted requests?

The current issue of VISION Magazine has an article on "What does it mean to be a Carmelite?", available here and here. Author Pat Morrison has provided some addtional Carmelite resources.

Individual monasteries of Discalced Carmelite nuns listed under their respective associations:
• Carmelite Communities Associated
• Mary Queen of Carmel Association
• St. Teresa Association

Communities of friars located under their province listings:
• Washington Province
• Oklahoma Province
• Western Province
• Order of Carmelites (Friars)

WHEN Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, six Catholic communities of religious women lost not only convents, chapels, cars, and motherhouses but also buildings housing ministries that served the people of the city—high schools, daycare sites, community centers, senior nursing home facilities, and others. The story of the dilemma the sisters faced between remaining and rebuilding or ministering elsewhere is told in a new documentary, We Shall Not Be Moved: The Catholic Sisters of New Orleans.

The communities the film profiled (some of whom can be found in VISION)—the Ursuline Sisters, the Congregation of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Sisters of the Holy Family of New Orleans, the Marianites of Holy Cross, the Congregation of St. Joseph, and the Society of St. Teresa of Jesus (Teresian Sisters)—have served in the New Orleans area for an average of 175 years, the oldest for 285 years.

“This analysis elevates the program . . . to a complex and fascinating journey with religious women who faced an uncertain personal and public future,” said Sister of St. Francis of Sylvania, Ohio Judith Ann Zielinski, O.S.F., the film’s writer and producer for NewGroup Media in South Bend, Indiana. “Their choices were not uniform, simple, or immediate; ultimately, however, all six congregations . . . reconfirmed their commitment to the city and its people,” she said.

The SC Ministry Foundation in Cincinnati coordinated the film project and received funding from the Assembly of Catholic Foundations and other Catholic foundations and congregations of women religious.

“I have had the privilege of witnessing the faith, hope, and love of these women religious in New Orleans since 2005,” said Sister of Charity of Cincinnati Sally Duffy, S.C., president and executive director of the SC Ministry Foundation and an executive producer of the film. “These prophetic sisters transformed the destruction and devastation through the power of the Spirit and through the abiding presence of Christ. They rebuilt high schools, child-care development centers, community centers, and motherhouses, in some cases starting from nothing. In other cases they began programs that responded to the needs they saw around them after Hurricane Katrina.”

The ABC network has been offering the film to its affiliates. To see if a broadcast is scheduled in your area, go online.

Here’s the trailer:

October is Mission Month in the Roman Catholic Church, and on October 1 the Maryknoll Sisters will go live with their first website for teens.

Teen4Mission features stories for, about, and by teens who are making mission part of their everyday lives. In October it will have an interactive daily calendar with articles, links to videos, and mission-focused games as well as places where teens themselves can upload their own articles, pictures, and videos about mission and share their thoughts about mission in daily life with other teens.

See a preview of the site.

"They were her only caregivers. The sisters got her medical help and are giving the boys some stability. Now the boys are free to claim much of the childhood they were losing. Clearly, we all share responsibility for the Matts and Marks in our nation."

ARCHBISHOP Aymond blesses the new discernment house for women in New Orleans.

The current issue of the VISION Catholic Religious Vocation Discernment Guide has an item on Manresa House at Boston College, where students who are considering life as a sister, brother, or priest in a religious order can gather for talks, prayer, meetings, retreats, and other activities connected to the process of vocational discernment, regardless of which religious communities they may be interested in.

Now the Archdiocese of New Orleans has opened a similar facility for women in addition to the region’s men’s house of discernment that already exists. The idea of Archbishop Gregory Aymond and Sister Sylvia Thibodeaux, S.S.F., director of the archdiocesean office for religious, Magnificat House of Discernment for Women is a full-time home for post-college-age women to live in community while discerning a possible call to religious life. The project is a collaboration between the archdiocese and women’s religious communities in the New Orleans area. For more information about Magnificat House, “like” NOLA Vocations on Facebook.

“Trailblazers in Habits,” a 90-minute film documenting the work of the Maryknoll Sisters, the first U.S.-based congregation of Catholic women religious dedicated to foreign missions, will have its New York premiere on Sunday, October 28, 2012, at 2 p.m. at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd St., New York, NY.

A portrait of the Maryknoll Sisters’ endeavors in Hong Kong and elsewhere throughout the world, the documentary tells the story in the sisters’ own words, a chronicle that spans 100 years and several continents. The premiere coincides with the Maryknoll Sisters' Centennial year. Here's the 7-minute trailer:

SISTER Jennifer Gordon, S.C.L.

• It looks like safe houses for mothers and their children who are fleeing abusive relationships.
• It looks like campus ministers chaperoning college students on overnight bus rides to participate in the annual national pro-life march in Washington, D.C.  
• It looks like teachers who open their students' minds and hearts to the wisdom and the mystery of the universe.
• It looks like Catholic hospitals and health systems learning to partner with other-than-Catholic care providers to better meet the needs of the communities they serve.
• It looks like planting school gardens to teach elementary school children how to care for the earth.
• It looks like retired Sisters spending hours each day in front of the Blessed Sacrament, praying for our communities, for our church and for our world.  
• It looks like nuns on a bus, pointing out flaws in our federal budget and offering a more just alternative.
• And it looks like the hospital chaplain who works nights, who journeys with women who have been trafficked, accompanying them as they have tattoos removed, tattoos displaying their pimps' names that the pimps had had etched into the women's inner thighs.

CORITA KENT in front of some of her work (Photo courtesy LCWR).

Last month the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington, D.C. wrapped up an exhibit of prints by Corita Kent, who is mentioned in this year’s VISION magazine article on the “Women of Spirit” exhibit about the history of religious sisters in the United States.

To read more about Corita Kent and the “R(ad)ical Love: Sister Mary Corita” show and see some images from it as well as watch a video, go the NMWA website.

London (Ecumenical News International). While many young people in the U.K. are gearing up for a summer of backpacking or the beach, one group is choosing to stay home and spend their holidays in a more unusual way—doing voluntary conservation work in ancient cathedrals, chapels, and churches. Cathedral Camps, run by the U.K. charity Community Service Volunteers, is seeing about 150 young people from ages 16 to 25 painting walls, polishing spires, ringing bells, surveying tombstones, and cleaning graveyards during the day and sleeping overnight in gardens, presbyteries [church houses], or cloisters. "The experience is a chance to see the hidden corners of some of the nation's most iconic religious buildings in England, Scotland and Wales," said Hannah Foxon, a seasoned camper.

A video about the campers' experiences: