Mayra Buvinic is sector director for gender and development at the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network of the World Bank. She was a founding member and president of the International Center for Research on Women. Contact her through the bank’s media division in Washington, D.C.

Lutheran World Relief works in 35 countries on issues such as water accessibility, disaster relief and supporting women’s businesses.

A 2003 Washington Post/ABC News poll showed strong support for Pope John Paul II in general, but many disagreements with him among American Catholics-and more so among non-Catholics on specific issues.

Global Ministries is the United Methodist Church’s missionary arm that has worked in 60 countries around the world. Its missions have included providing educational resources to women.

Covenant World Relief is the Evangelical Covenant Church’s philanthropic arm that has worked in five continents on community issue projects and disaster relief. Some efforts include working with women in human sex trafficking, building micro-loans for women’s small businesses and developing their agricultural skills.

Barbara C. Crafton is an Episcopal priest in Metuchen, N.J., and the author of Jesus Wept: When Faith & Depression Meet. She manages an online mental health site called The Geranium Farm.

Matthew Stanford is CEO of the Hope and Healing Center and Institute in Houston and an expert on mental illness and the church. He is the author of Grace for the Afflicted: A Clinical and Biblical Perspective on Mental Illness. He has studied how seminaries prepare students to address mental illness within faith communities.

Nancy Kehoe is a psychologist and a Catholic nun in Belmont, Mass. She is the author of Wrestling With Our Inner Angels: Faith, Mental Illness and the Journey to Wholeness. 

James Davies is a  senior lecturer in social anthropology and psychotherapy at Roehampton University in London and a  psychotherapist. He wrote an article in the winter/spring 2011 edition of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, “The Rationalization of Suffering,” about the role of suffering and faith in therapy.