Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Sisters were founded in Mulagumudu, South India, then under the rule of the British Raj, in 1897 by Mother Marie Louise De Meester, a canoness regular from Ypres, Belgium.

Always feeling a strong interest in the foreign missions of the Catholic Church, with the blessing of her prioress, De Meester left her native country to respond to the invitation of the Discalced Carmelite friars in India to care for orphans and abandoned children.

Her sole companion was Dame Marie Ursule (civil name Germaine De Jonckheere), a novice of that same monastery.

From India De Meester established new communities of canonesses in the Philippines (1910), the West Indies (1914), the United States (1919), in Congo, (1920), and China (1923).

[1] After World War II, the canonesses established new communities in Burundi (1944), Hong Kong (1953), Taiwan (1959), Guatemala, (1964), Brazil (1965), Cameroon (1969), Haiti (1977), Lebanon, (1987), Mongolia (1995), and Chad (1996).