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SMSM Beginnings
 Unlike
most religious congregations, Marist Missionary Sisters do
not claim any founder or foundress except, perhaps, that of
Our Lady herself. Rather, we claim eleven Pioneers, exceptional
women who went out on mission in a way that was unheard of
for women of their times. Our Pioneers began their missionary
efforts in affiliation with the Society of Mary. This Society
can trace its beginnings to an inspiration of several seminarians
in France in 1816. They felt called to work towards the establishment
of a religious group whose gift to the Church would be to
bring the presence of Mary into contemporary society. Twenty
years later the Church officially recognized the Society of
Mary as a religious group of priests and Brothers. The desire
of the early Marists was that the Society would include sisters
and a lay branch.
At the time of its recognition as
a congregation in 1836, the Society of Mary was given the
responsibility to evangelize the islands of Oceania and four
Marist priests set out for the Pacific. A few years after
the martyrdom of St. Peter Chanel (Marist) in 1841, the people
on the island of Futuna became Catholic. It was a letter from
two women of the Island of Wallis asking for someone to come
and help them and their children to develop as good Christians
that inspired our first Pioneer, Marie-Françoise Perroton,
to leave France and travel to the Pacific. As Marie-Françoise
Perroton stepped aboard a trading vessel headed for the Pacific
in 1845 at the age of 49, she took the first step towards
the establishment of the Missionary Sisters of the Society
of Mary (smsm). Her great desire was to be missionary, happy
to be associated with the Society of Mary and perhaps eventually
she would become a religious. Marie-Françoise arrived
in the Island of Wallis in 1846 and served the people there
for some years before going to a nearby island to continue
her ministry. After twelve years in Oceania, she rejoiced
in the day when other women from France joined her. Between
1857 and 1860, ten other women joined Marie-Françoise
as missionaries in Wallis, Futuna, New Caledonia and Samoa.
It is these eleven women, our Pioneer sisters, who were there
at our origins. Although our Pioneers were lay women, their
desire to be missionary, Marist and religious was evident.
They were genuine missionaries who lived and worked very closely
with the people, giving of themselves constantly. At the outset
of their journeys, these women were inducted into the Third
Order of Mary for the Missions of Oceania and considered
themselves to be truly Marist. They considered their vow of
obedience to the bishop of the vicariate in which they lived
and the religious rule that they followed (which included
all the spiritual exercises for religious) to be the seed
of their religious consecration. Women from the islands of
the Pacific joined our Pioneers in the early years of their
missionary activity. And, over time, women from many other
countries followed in their footsteps. After years of development
and being held together as a loose affiliation of missionary
women, our congregation finally received official Church recognition
in 1931 and became known as the Missionary Sisters of the
Society of Mary. It was then that the movement launched
by Marie Françoise-Perroton came into its own.
Today, the Marist Family consists
of various Marist lay groups around the world and four religious
congregations: The Society of Mary (the Marist Fathers
and Brothers), The Congregation
of Mary (the Marist Sisters), The Marist Brothers
of the Schools (the Marist Teaching Brothers), The
Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary (Marist Missionary
Sisters).
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