Franciscan Sisters of Mary

The Franciscan Sisters of Mary is a Roman Catholic religious congregation of religious sisters based in St. Louis, Missouri, which was formed in 1987 from the merger of two related congregations. The congregations founded hospitals throughout the Midwestern United States, which the current congregation still operates.

The congregation has its origins in St. Louis in the work of Mother Mary Odilia Berger who had emigrated from Germany in 1872 with four companions. The original congregation was the Sisters of St. Mary (S.S.M.). They received their name because their residence shared a door with St. Mary of Victories Church in downtown St. Louis.

Anna Katherine (later Mother Odilia) Berger was born in Regen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. In 1858 she joined the Poor Franciscan Sisters of the Holy Family of Pirmasens, Germany, founded by the Blessed Paul Joseph Nardini and was sent to beg in Paris.

In Paris she co-founded the Sisters Servants of the Sacred Heart in 1866 with the Abbé Peter-Victor Braun, but had to flee Paris when the city was besieged during the Franco-Prussian War. Berger spent several years in Elberfeld in the Rhineland, where she tried to start a new community with the same goals. Frustrated in this goal by the government of the Kulturkampf, she and four of her companions emigrated to St. Louis in 1872. In 1874 they founded the Sisters of St. Mary under the Rule of the Franciscan Third Order Regular.

...
Wikipedia