Since assuming a second term of office on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump, with the assistance of his zealous lieutenants, has, among other “accomplishments,” pardoned every one of the 1,500 rioters who were charged with participating in the attack on the Capitol in 2021; forced universities to capitulate to ideological demands at the risk of losing their federal funding; deployed the National Guard to traditionally liberal cities, where it is neither needed nor wanted…

Sister Barbara has always been drawn to the unknown. In 1965, a week before her eighteenth birthday, she travelled some 400km from Mount Gambier to Adelaide to join the Sisters of Mercy. Her entire family piled into the car and for five hours, Barbara and her siblings sat in the backseat watching lonely farmhouses tear past the window. Barbara had no idea that this would be the first of many long journeys…

It was 1962 in Taiwan, and I was five years old. The dormitory where my family lived had a single living space, with the bedroom raised three feet above the floor, and partitioned by a Japanese paper sliding door. My parents slept on a wooden double bed placed atop the Japanese tatami. Beside them, five children, ranging in age from seven to one, lay side by side on the tatami, sleeping soundly.