More than 60 people live at the nonprofit continuing-care retirement community run by the Little Sisters, including 40 residents in nursing units.

Throughout the United States, thousands of women religious took on nursing duties in hospitals or clinics and went into private homes to offer food, medicine, comfort and even housecleaning to families affected by the Spanish flu.

To its benefit, “Sister,” directed by Joe Cardona and José L. Vázquez, does not focus exclusively on Sister Helen’s work against the death penalty but also discusses her early life and spiritual formation.

When Anne Marie Becraft established her school in the midst of the nation’s and the church’s slaveholding elite, she powerfully declared that the lives of black people, especially women and girls, mattered.

How a tiny U.S. Post Office in Ossining, N.Y., became the site of a caper for the ages.

One of Audrey Hepburn’s most compelling films—1959’s “The Nun’s Story,” directed by Fred Zinnemann—is also one of her most overlooked.