The OLA Blog
Stories, reflections, and updates from our mission and community life. Here we share reflections, insights and experiences, believing that the simple act of sharing can inspire, connect, and open hearts.
The OLA Mission in Liberia
Liberia carries the memory of decades of civil conflict and the long aftermath of the Ebola epidemic of 2014–2016. Recovery has been slow and uneven, shaped by significant gaps in healthcare, education, and infrastructure, and by the particular vulnerability of women...
Together as One Family in Lagos: A Triple Jubilee
Our District Leader, Sr Mary Crowley, is in Lagos this week, among leaders and members of the Sisters of Our Lady of Apostles and the Society of African Missions gathering from across the world for the Triple Jubilee: 150 years of the OLA, 170 years of the SMA, and...
A Sword Will Pierce Your Own Soul Too
In the first two reflections this month, Mary spoke. At the Annunciation, she asked a question from within her own reality before she said yes. In the Magnificat, she named the world she and her people knew and proclaimed its reversal...
Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo’s Encyclical on AI, is Published
Pope Leo XIV published his first social encyclical yesterday, 25 May 2026. It was signed on 15 May, the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, through which Leo XIII laid the foundations of the Church's social teaching in 1891, and the timing is deliberate....
Pilgrimage to Knock in Our Jubilee Year
This weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to Knock, Ireland’s national Marian shrine, together with the Society of African Missions. We came together in prayer, remembrance and thanksgiving around three anniversaries: 170 years since the Society of African Missions...
Proclaiming the Magnificat
In our second reflection on Mary, we move from the Annunciation to the Magnificat — from the question she asked before her yes, to the proclamation she made after it. Mary proclaims the Magnificat in someone else's house, in the early weeks of a pregnancy she...
Pope Leo XIV’s First Encyclical Will Address AI and Human Dignity
Pope Leo XIV will personally present his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, at the Vatican's Synod Hall on 25 May. The document takes as its subject the protection of human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence, and its publication has been anticipated...
A Call That Would Not Be Ignored
The women in this piece, first published in the Irish Catholic, entered OLA mission across seven decades, on two continents, in circumstances that had little in common except one thing.Ardfoyle Convent c.1945Frances Geary grew up in a house full of noise and people,...
How Can This Be?
For the remaining Fridays of May, this month that is given over to Our Lady, we will reflect with Mary through three moments in Scripture where her life meets uncertainty, truth, and grief. At the Annunciation, Mary hears words she could not have prepared herself to...
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