From this organisation later sprang the Order of Saint Ursula, whose nuns established places of prayer and learning throughout Europe and, later, worldwide, most notably in North America.

Merici's uncle died when she was twenty years old and she returned to her home in Desenzano, and lived with her brothers,[3] on her own property, given to her in lieu of the dowry that would otherwise have been hers had she married.

On 25 November 1535, Merici gathered with 12 young women who had joined in her work in a small house in Brescia near the Church of Saint Afra, where together they committed themselves in the founding of the Company of St. Ursula, placed under the protection of the patroness of medieval universities.

[6] Merici taught her companions to serve God, but to remain in the world, teaching the girls of their own neighborhood, and to practice a religious form of life in their own homes.

[7] When Merici died in Brescia on 27 January 1540,[1] there were 24 communities of the Company of St. Ursula serving the Catholic Church through the region.

The traditional view is that Merici believed that better Christian education was needed for girls and young women, to which end she dedicated her life.

Querciolo Mazzonis argues that the Company of St. Ursula was not originally intended as a charitable group specifically focused on the education of poor girls, but that this direction developed after her death in 1540, sometime after it received formal recognition in 1546.

There her body remained until the complete destruction of this church and its surrounding area by Allied bombing during the Second World War, on 2 March 1945, in which the parish priest and many townspeople died.

Lastly, in the major 1969 reform of the liturgy, Pope Paul VI moved the celebration, ranked as a Memorial, to the saint's day of death, 27 January.