Suore Missionarie di San Pietro Claver
"La più divina tra le cose divine è cooperare con Dio nella salvezza delle anime"
Our history
Founded in 1894 by Blessed Maria Teresa Ledóchowska, the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of St. Peter Claver is an international religious family made up of small communities spread across 27 countries.
Through missionary animation we involve thousands of people in the evangelizing action of the Church. Directly with the word or through the means of communication, we try to inform about the missions and to form every baptized person in missionary responsibility.
The Foundation of the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of San Pietro Claver, fits into the extraordinary development of missionary activity in Africa, which the Church knew in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The goal of my life and of the Congregation to which I belong is to make the missions known
and, if possible, root them in every heart.
​
Blessed Maria Teresa Ledóchowska
Founder
​
To carry out the foundation project, God used it by Maria Teresa Ledóchowska (1863 - 1922) - then a lady court of Archduchess Alice of Tuscany in Salzburg - which, inflamed by the words of the great apostle e Primate of Africa, Cardinal Charles M. Lavigerie, decided to consecrate one's life to collaborate in salvation of Africans.
Abandoned the life of the court, with the word and with it written, he tried to make known to the Christians of Europe the deplorable situation of Africa, especially of African woman. Three years of tireless work in solitude made her understand the need to found a pious association of lay people wishing to cooperate a this end. In the audience granted to her on April 29, 1894, the Pope Leo XIII, approved this project.
First name
​
“The name was chosen Sodality of San Pietro Claver Why it is placed under the special protection of St. Peter Claver of the Society of Jesus. This Saint dedicated his whole life in the service of the poor blacks. Had been canonized in 1888 by Leo XIII, precisely in the year in which, by a wonderful disposition of Divine Providence - behind the fervent words of card. Lavigerie - the first spark for the foundation fell in a poor man human heart and lit it "
(Maria Teresa Ledóchowska, Notes on the Sodality of San Pietro Claver, 1901).
Religious congregation
​
Three years later, Maria Teresa Ledóchowska, docile to Divine Providence, he converted the Sodality into one Female religious congregation. On April 16, 1897 the archbishop of Salzburg, card. Johannes Haller, agreed the first Constitutions, based on the Rule of St. Ignatius by Loyola. In his hands the Foundress together with the first companion, Melania von Ernst, issued the first Religious profession and the Sodality of St. Peter Claver it became a religious congregation of diocesan right.
On 25 June 1901 the Congregation passed under the dependence of Propaganda Fide (today Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples), his general house in 1902 she was transferred from Salzburg to Rome and on 7 March 1910 - final approval of the Saint obtained Headquarters - the Sodality of St. Peter Claver (today the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of St. Peter Claver), it became a religious congregation of pontifical right.
​
Beatification of the Foundress
Maria Teresa Ledóchowska died in Rome on 6 July 1922. Il January 26, 1945, at the request of numerous Bishops and faithful, the process of his beatification was opened. Thirty years later, on World Mission Sunday, October 19 1975 in Rome, Pope Paul VI proclaimed her Blessed.
At the service of the missionary Church
After the Second Vatican Council, the Congregation extended its missionary cooperation activities also to other Continents. Currently its internal members (religious) and external (lay people, in various associated ways to the Congregation) work on five continents, in conformity to the specific charism of the Foundress, that is, missionary animation aimed at informing and forming Christians to cooperate in the work of evangelization of the church.