Foundress

María de la providencia  

The Sisters of the Helpers of the Holy Souls were founded in 1856 by Eugénie Smet.

 

Eugénie Smet (Mary of Providence) was born in Lille, a town in the north of France, on the 25th of March 1825. Her desire was to found an Institute which helped men and women to experience the meeting with God as an experience of love, while at the same time placing all their trust in Divine Providence. She offered her life for the most abandoned of this world and the next.

 

A few years after the foundation to small group received a call from the Church to go to China. This marked the beginning of the international and universal mission of the Institute: “to go from the depths of Purgatory to the utmost limits of the earth”.

 

Mary of Providence died on the 7th of February 1871 and was beatified in 1957 by Pius XII.