Society of the Divine Word
| Societas Verbi Divini | |
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Location of countries where SVD serves
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| Abbreviation | SVD |
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| Formation | September 8, 1875 |
| Founder | St. Arnold Janssen |
| Type | Institute of Consecrated Life |
| Headquarters | Via dei Verbiti 1, 00154 Roma RM, Italia |
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Membership (2013)
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6001 (Male religious, including 4171 priests) |
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Superior General
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Rev. Fr. Heinz Kulüke, S.V.D. |
| Affiliations | Catholic Church |
| Mission | Bringing Christ’s love, teachings and compassion to all people |
| Website | svdmissions |
The Society of the Divine Word (Latin: Societas Verbi Divini, abbreviated SVD), popularly called Verbites or the Divine Word Missionaries, and sometimes the Steyler Missionaries, is a missionary religious congregation in the Latin Church, one of the 24 sui iuris churches which make up the Catholic Church. As of 2006 it consisted of 6,102 members composed of priests and brothers. It is the largest missionary congregation in the Catholic Church. The superior general is Heinz Kulüke who hails from Germany.
The Society was founded in Steyl in the Netherlands in 1875 by Arnold Janssen, a diocesan priest, and drawn mostly from German priests and religious exiles in the Netherlands during the church-state conflict called the Kulturkampf, which had resulted in many religious groups being expelled and seminaries being closed in Germany. In 1882, the Society started sending missionaries into China’s Shandong Province, where their aggressive methods were part of the chain of events that led to the Boxer Uprising in the late 1890s. In 1892, missionaries were sent to Togo a small country in west Africa. The Togo mission was particularly fruitful for by 15 years later the Holy See had appointed an Apostolic prefect. The Society’s third mission was to German New Guinea (the northern half of present-day Papua New Guinea). In 1898 a fourth mission to be opened was in Argentina, an historically Catholic country where the Society quickly assumed responsibility for several parishes, schools and also seminaries in four dioceses: Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, La Plata and Paraná all of which are now archdioceses.
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