Mary Frances Schervier, TOSF (3 January 1819 – 14 December 1876) was a German Catholic nun who founded two congregations of religious sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis, both committed to serving the neediest of the poor.

After the death of both her mother and two sisters from tuberculosis when she was thirteen, Schervier became the homemaker for her father, and developed a reputation for generosity to the poor,[1] from her growing awareness of their desperate conditions.

In a dispute over the rights of the Catholic Church in 1837 (Kölner Wirren), the Prussian government imprisoned the Archbishop of Cologne, Clemens August von Droste-Vischering, causing a great public reaction; the repercussion was a revival of religious spirit, especially in Westphalia and the Rhine country.

She considered joining the Trappistines, but instead of entering an existing convent, on 3 October 1845 she and four other women left their homes to establish a religious community devoted to caring for the poor under Schervier's leadership.

[2] The pre-revolutionary potato and grain failures and the refusal of some benefactors to continue their assistance once the Sisters began ministering to prostitutes, intensified their difficulties.

The congregation obtained formal church recognition from the local bishop on 2 July 1851, despite some authorities' objections to Schervier's severe position regarding personal poverty.

At the same time Schervier oversaw the foundation of several hospitals and sanatoria in both Europe and the United States for those suffering from tuberculosis, then a widespread cause of death, especially among the working classes.

Like the Sisters, they are a religious congregation of lay brothers of the Franciscan Third Order Regular, instituted for charitable work among orphan boys and educating the youth of the poorer classes.

After a formal investigation into her life requested of the Holy See by the Archbishop of Cincinnati and the declaration of a miraculous cure of a man in Ohio, Schervier was beatified in 1974 by Pope Paul VI.

In 1934 the Apostolic Process was opened in Rome, Decree issued for Introduction of the Cause of Mary Frances Schervier, of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis.

In 1973 the "medically inexplicable" and sudden cure of Ludwig Braun from a life-threatening pancreatic and intestinal ailment was recognized as the miracle necessary for the beatification of Schervier.