DAME DI SAN LUIGI. – A female congregation with simple vows founded in Strasbourg in 1842 by Miss Luisa Haufmann as the female branch of the Institute of St. Luigi or Ludovico, which the Abbé Luigi M. Bautain had established in 1832 after his conversion to Catholicism and which Gregory XVI approved on 17 July 1844. In 1869 the Bishop of Meaux approved the constitutions of the Dames de Saint-Louis, dedicated to the education of young girls and the visitation of the sick. At present the professed sisters number about 70, with their generalate in Meaux.
BIBL.: Archivio della S. Congr. dei Religiosi; M. Heimbucher, Die Orden und Kongregationen der Katholischen Kirche, II, 3rd ed., Paderborn 1933, p. 532.