C.PP.S.

The Missionaries of the Precious Blood form a community of priests and brothers within the Roman Catholic Church. The Society was founded by Saint Gaspar del Bufalo in 1815. The Missionaries of the Precious Blood is a shortened English translation of the Latin "Congregatio Missionariorum Pretiosissimi Sanguinis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi," (The Congregation of Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ). Priests and brothers use the post-nominal initials C.PP.S. after their names.

It is a Society of Apostolic Life, composed of secular priests and brothers who live in community. Members do not take vows but are held together by the bond of charity only and by a promise of "fidelity to the Congregation of Missionaries of the Precious Blood in accordance with its Constitution and Statutes, giving [themselves] entirely to the service of God". (see the formula of incorporation found in C37 of the Normative Texts 2008.) The stated charism of the Society is to bring the Word of God to where it is most needed.

Saint Gaspare del Bufalo founded the Society at the request of Pope Pius VII, who was shocked by the spiritual situation in Rome after he returned from exile. Pius decided that missions should be established throughout the Papal States. In 1814, he selected del Bufalo and some other priests to undertake the responsibility, assigning them to the abbey of San Felice at Giano dell'Umbria, in the Umbria region of Italy. Del Bufalo and his confreres made a foundation on 15 August 1815. Soon, several houses were opened, and in 1820 missions were established for the express purpose of reaching out to the bandits who plagued the area.

However, when Leo XII was elected pope in 1823, the growth of the Society was checked. Leo XII was unfavourably inclined towards its mission and objected to the proposed name, ‘Congregation of the Most Precious Blood’, seeing it as something of a novelty. Eventually, the Society was cleared of all accusations and the name was justified by reference to sacred Scripture. When Gaspare died of cholera in 1837 the Society had some 200 members and the Rule was given approval in 1841. Giovanni Merlini was a successor of Gaspare, a native of Spoleto and a friend of Pius IX, who had been elected in 1846, and whose exile at Gaeta he had shared when Pius fled from the Roman Republic in November 1848. Through the influence of Pope Pius IX, several new houses were opened in Italy, and one each in Alsace and Bavaria. The mother-house was established at the Church of Santa Maria in Trivio, Rome. In the 1860s the Republican Government suppressed some twenty-five houses of the Society, including the Maria in Trivio property and confiscated the revenues of the seminary at Albano. The Kulturkampf (1871–1878), enacted by the Prime Minister of Prussia Otto von Bismarck against the Catholic Church, closed the houses in Alsace and in several German-speaking states.

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