Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy

The Sisters of Charity of Our Lady Mother of Mercy are a Roman Catholic congregation founded in the Netherlands in 1832 by Rev. Johannes Zwijsen, pastor of Tilburg, aided by Mary M. Leijsen, for the instruction of children and the betterment of people deprived of spiritual aid.

The See of Utrecht had been vacant for about three hundred years when, on the reestablishment of the Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands in 1853, Bishop Johannes Zwijsen, of Gerra, was appointed archbishop of the reestablished Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Utrecht and Primate of the Netherlands. He found no Catholic institutions for the education of girls in this vast diocese, neither were there any teaching religious institutes, with the exception of his humble congregation.

Zwijsen's accession to the see gave fresh impetus to his cherished work, and from that time the congregation spread rapidly throughout the Netherlands and Belgium. Among these institutions were homes for the aged and infirm, the blind, the mute and also hospitals.

The Rules were approved by Pope Gregory XVI in 1843, and Pope Pius IX approved the congregation in 1848. About the middle of the nineteenth century, when cholera was raging in the Netherlands, the heroic charity of the sisters even won the recognition of the fiercely anti-catholic King William III who conferred decorations of honour on the congregation.

In December 2005, this congregation had 889 members and 115 houses.

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