Who We Are

We are a Secular Institute of Pontifical Right made up of Missionaries (consecrated laywomen) and Volunteers (associated lay or cleric members). Our Institute was founded in 1954 in Bologna, Italy, by Conventual Franciscan Father Luigi Faccenda. It's objective is to be a Marian and missionary presence in the Church and society. The spiritual experience of St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr in Auschwitz, based on the entrustment to the Immaculata, is the richness that unites us and that we wish to welcome, live, and communicate.

Missionaries

We live the gift of consecration to God in a lifestyle that embodies Gospel values in the environments in which we are inserted. Some of us live in our own families or alone, others in groups of fraternal life in the Houses of the Immaculata. In both cases we can work professionally or dedicate ourselves full time to the apostolate of the Institute. We profess publicly and forever the vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience after a time of adequate preparation. Prayer helps us to discern God's presence and action in us, others, and the events of the world.

Volunteers

We are lay people or priests who wish to live the Gospel by sharing the Marian spirituality and mission of the Institute. Being a Volunteer does not imply giving up one's state of life, one's family or one's social position. At the end of a period of formation we are associated and become a living part of this great Family. Our strength is the total offering of ourselves to the Immaculate Conception, which we renew with confidence every day; it is a desire that becomes prayer and that makes every expression of our lives precious: relationships, work, joys, sorrows, illness...