Sisters, Servants of Mary

The Servants of Mary, Ministers to the Sick, are a Roman Catholic religious institute of women founded in Madrid, Spain, in 1851 and dedicated to the care of the sick poor, both in clinics, hospices and through home health nursing. They were founded by Maria Soledad Torres y Acosta (1826–1887). The Religious Sisters of this congregation use the postnominal initials of S.M.

History

In 1851 Torres y Acosta was a young woman, 25 years of age, who had felt a call to an enclosed religious order. While she was awaiting admittance to a monastery, she helped the Daughters of Charity who had educated her in their care of the poor of the city. At that point, a local priest, Miguel Martínez y Sanz, a member of the Servite Third Order, proposed to her a project he had come to envision of a religious community of women caring for their sick, including visiting them in their homes. Torres agreed to help in the project and on 15 August of that same year, having received the permission of the Bishop of Madrid, on the feast day of the Assumption of Mary, she and the six women who had also felt called to commit themselves to this service were given the religious habit of the new congregation.<ref name=SM /^[1]

By 1856 the original seven Sisters had grown to 12. At that point, Martínez, the inspiration of the foundation, left to serve as a missionary in the Spanish colony of Fernando Pó, off the coast of Africa. He recruited half the community of Sisters to accompany him in this mission. At that point, Torres assumed the office of Superior of the community. A rebellion by the Sisters of the community led her to step down, until she was reinstated after an investigation by the new director of the community, an Augustinian Recollect friar, Gabino Sánchez, O.A.R.^[2]

The Sisters continued to grow, and Torres opened a new community in Valencia in 1868 and, in 1875, they expanded their service to Havana, Cuba, then still part of Spain.^[3] At the time of her death there were 46 communities of Servants of Mary in Europe and Latin America. Today the Sisters also serve in Cameroon, the United States and the Philippines.^[4]

References