Nuns fight against poverty

It sounds like the plotline for a reality-TV show: Four young, idealistic women leave their big-city homes to move to the rural South, where they become the only white people living on the poor, black side of town. They try to save the world, or at least their little corner of it.

They work as orange pickers, teachers, translators, radio-show hosts, grant writers and even managers of a Mexican restaurant. One gets beaten, another mugged, and a third nearly dies and has to have quintuple-bypass surgery. They hold children in their arms, dance, lead a massive immigration-rights march and try to solve gang violence.

And they pray.

The rest of the story is here.