[3][4][5] The Congregation of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd began as a branch of the Order of Our Lady of Charity (Ordo Dominae Nostrae de Caritate), founded in 1641 by John Eudes, at Caen, France, and dedicated to the care, rehabilitation, and education of girls and young women in difficulty.

At the age of eighteen, she joined the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Charity in Tours and was given her the name Mary of Saint Euphrasia.

Each convent of the Order of Our Lady of Charity was independent and autonomous, with neither shared resources nor provisions for transferring personnel as needed.

Mary Euphrasia Pelletier envisioned a new governing structure that would free the sisters to respond more readily to requests for assistance.

In her lifetime 110 Good Shepherd convents were established in places as various as Rome, Italy (1838), Munich, Germany (1839) and Mons, Belgium (1839).

[7] The first convent of the Good Shepherd in Great Britain was founded in London in 1841 and then in Dalbeth, Glasgow in 1851, moving to Bishopton, Renfrewshire in 1953.

[7] Additional convents were founded in El-Biar, Algeria (1843), Cairo, Egypt (1846), Limerick, Ireland (1848), Vienna, Austria (1853), Bangalore, India (1854), San Felipe, Chile (1855), Malta (1858), Leiderdorp, Holland (1860), and Rangoon, Burma (1866).

[14] In Thailand in 2021, Piyachat Boonmul of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd was appointed by the Thai government to a national advisory role in a committee with tasks of coordinating plans for the prevention and suppression of prostitution, establishment of shelters and protection, and setting regulations for detainees' acceptance and care.

From 1893 to 1910 authorities in Davenport, Iowa placed 260 underage girls in Good Shepherd Homes in Omaha, Peoria, Dubuque, and elsewhere.

"[16] When the Sisters of the Good Shepherd arrived in St. Paul in 1868, their mission was to serve the needs of the homeless, wayward, and criminal girls and women.

In Wood's view the Davenport use of the Good Shepherd Homes "anticipated the juvenile court system created by Progressive reformers a few years later".

[16] By 1895, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd cared for numerous poor elderly men including disabled Civil War veterans at a large asylum at 5010 North Avenue in Milwaukee.

[12] The Good Shepherd Sisters in Seattle ran a home for young women, most of whom were runaways, referred to the nuns by juvenile courts that deemed them "incorrigible".

[20] Deborah Mullins, the youngest of twelve from a divorced family, said the Good Shepherd nuns "[W]ere the best thing that ever happened to me.

[21] In 1993, the Woburn-based Cummings Foundation purchased the property and renovated it into the upscale independent and assisted living community, New Horizons.

The Sisters continue to live there today rent-free, and offer residents daily Masses in the Cardinal Cushing Chapel.

At the request of the Melbourne bishop James Goold, four sisters, led by Mary of St Joseph Doyle, arrived in Australia in 1863.

The convent was established carry out the heart of the Good Shepherd mission, that of providing refuge for women deemed outcasts of society.

The nuns shared the conditions of the inmates, such as bland food, hard work, the confinement and the long periods of silence.

"We acknowledge" [writes the Australian Province Leader Sister Anne Manning] "that for numbers of women, memories of their time with Good Shepherd are painful.

"[28] The Congregation ran institutions which provided residential accommodation for children and adults in Belfast, Derry and Newry in Northern Ireland.

In regard to the Good Shepherd Sisters facilities in Belfast, Derry and Newry, Hart said there had been "unacceptable practices" of young girls being forced to do industrial work in the laundries.

[30] The Ireland branch of the congregation has been accused of labor abuse, with inmates forced by nuns to perform laborious work in laundries and factory-like setups for pocket-money pay for companies such as Hasbro.

[31][32] In Dublin in 1993, the order sold land to property developers in High Park, Drumcondra, that partly included a graveyard containing the mass grave of former inmates of its Magdalene Laundry.

[3] One of the interviewed victims also mentioned rape, claims on the heritage of orphans to pay for living costs, while performing unpaid labour.

"[38]: 15:22  Others angry at the institutions' apologies included Caroline Farry, who attended St Joseph's Training School in Middletown from 1978-1981, overseen by nuns from the Sisters of St Louis,[38]: 15:04  Pádraigín Drinan from Survivors of Abuse,[38]: 14:55  and Alice Harper, whose brother, a victim of the De La Salle Brothers, had since died.

[38]: 14:55  Peter Murdock, from campaign group Savia, was at Nazareth Lodge Orphanage with his brother (who had recently died); he likened the institution to an "SS camp".

As of 2010[update] the Congregation of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd was an international order of religious women in the Roman Catholic Church with its some 4,000 nuns work in 70 countries across the world.