After serving in this field for several years, in 1845 she formed a small community with four companions, all drawn from the tertiary Franciscan fraternity of the city.
They formed this community in response to a desire to help alleviate the desperate conditions of the poor in their region in that period, which resulted from the economic and political upheavals taking place then.
The potato and grain failures which occurred during that period and the refusal of some benefactors to continue their assistance once the Sisters began ministering to prostitutes intensified their difficulties.
In the latter part of 1848 a mild form of cholera broke out in Aachen, followed by an epidemic of smallpox, and an infirmary was opened in a former Dominican priory, by then the property of the city.
[5] The community was formally established as a religious congregation of the Franciscan Third Order Regular by the Archbishop of Cologne on 2 July 1851, and Schervier was elected as Superior General.
Foundations were established in Ratingen, Mayence, Coblenz (1854); Kaiserswerth, Crefeld, Euskirchen (1855); Eschweiler (1858); Stolberg and Erfurt (1863)[5] According to the archivist of the Congregation in that period, they received state acceptance in 1853 mainly because "priests and religious persons were considered suitable for pacifying the people who had been roused by revolutionary ideas", and that the tide of government sentiment turned when "through unification of the conservative elements in the state, the Revolution (ed.
[5] At the same time, as their Superior General, 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.