The Miller Center at Santa Clara is just one institution in a broader network looking to make a positive social impact.

As she sat outside her hut making jewelry to sell to tourists, 9-year-old Sajon Lengupayi pleaded with passers-by to rescue her from an early marriage that she said her parents arranged without her consent.

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram has decimated villages in northern Nigeria, but Catholic parishioners remain faithful and courageous.

“We're supposed to show the face of Christ to people, but how can you do that if you take off when the going gets tough?” asked Dr. Tom Catena, a 54-year old physician from Amsterdam, New York.

The Nuba Mountains region in southern Sudan is a land the world has largely forgotten, except for the Catholic Church, which for more than three decades has stood with the people as they endured hunger, bombing and neglect.

Talks between President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar in Khartoum in neighboring Sudan entered the home stretch with negotiators fine-tuning the final chapter on power-sharing arrangements and governance.