At approximately the same time the Opening Mass for the Synod on the New Evangelisation was being celebrated in St. Peter's in Rome and the doctorates on Hildegard and John of Avila were being promulgated.

Apart from being only the 4^th woman in the history of the church to receive this honour Hildegard was an extraordinary woman. Her life spanned much of the 12^th century being born in Germany in 1098 and dying in 1179. She wrote extensively, composed music which subverted the principles of liturgical music of the time, was a philosopher, ecologist, mystic, Benedictine abbess and visionary.

She wrote theological, botanical and medicinal texts, as well as letters to people such as Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the reformist Cistercian monastic order. He sent the text of some of her work to Pope Eugenius 111 who endorsed her works and visions, giving her approval to document her visions as revelations from the Holy Spirit.

Her world at that time was in some ways not unlike our own time. There was an atmosphere of fear. New ideas were condemned as heresy. What helped Hildegard navigate through this minefield?

She was a prophet in that she lived immediately before Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Thomas Aquinas and the great Mechtilde of Magdeburg. Perhaps it is providential that she has remained hidden until now so that her impact on our time may be more beneficial, in releasing the spring of new discoveries into exploring God in the Gospel as revealed by Jesus, the Word.

Amazingly at sixty she did the unthinkable for her time. She travelled to cathedrals, churches, abbeys and monasteries preaching. This was at a time when only men preached and women were safely enclosed within monastic walls. What an inspiration for us today!

A Doctor of the Church who can speak the Word of God to all who listen. Catherine Hannan.

• Sister Catherine Hannan is a Home of Compassion sister.

On the front page of The Dominion Post was the headline "Bad Blood" highlighted with a vivid red sports car and the story of adopted kids at the heart of a family feud over a Horowhenua farm millions. Sure it's a sad story of human greed — but on the front of a major daily when terrified families were fleeing for their lives from widespread fighting in Damascus and tortured Kenyans were appealing for justice in London?

Inside there were items about a ‘Defamation action against MP's'; an ‘Exploitation' claim in a burial dispute; a Canadian judge giving a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis the right to die and the Crewes' murder debate still unresolved. A bank guard's 1976 murder case is reopened, an heiress's body is found rotting somewhere in Britain while Owen Glenn's donation of $80 million to prevent child abuse gets a fraction of the attention his political misdemeanours do.

If this is what news editors think we want to read what kind of commentary is it on our society? Sure there were some good news items such as the Carterton community rallying behind a seriously ill local youngster, Willie Apiata choosing to put his great mana into helping at risk youth foregoing the considerable money he could now make in some other spheres and an account of the research demonstrating women are the more intelligent sex.

But what I found most distressing were the references to the deaths of three women — two historical and one recent. A Coroner had made a final decision on what had happened to Irene A several years ago. But did she have to be labeled again as a prostitute after all these years?

And when Jane F's bones were found in Port Waikato and her family arranged her funeral she too was described as a prostitute. As her grieving mother said "Jane was a person with a family and friends. She was in street work for only two years of her life."

I just missed the funeral of Sophie A. Both at her funeral and in the newspaper she was described as being an unemployed housing NZ tenant and having mental health problems after embracing a dark gothic lifestyle. I knew her as a gentle woman who delighted in the hairdressing profession she trained in. Surely these women deserved to be treated with dignity especially in death? Catherine Hannan

• Catherine Hannan is a Sister of Compassion