FRANCISCAN SISTERS OF THE AFFLICTED (WARSAW). — In a modest building in Warsaw, some pious and innocent women in 1858 began to take in and care charitably for poor unemployed people who had been discharged from hospitals or were homeless. The work is still called the "Ricovero" (Shelter).
When the Capuchin Father Onorato, already founder of similar institutions, took charge of it, the work expanded; the members took the name of Franciscan Sisters of the Afflicted, and the Institute was established as a religious congregation in 1882. On July 3, 1909, it received the decree of praise, and in the same year was aggregated to the Order of Capuchins. The Holy See temporarily approved its constitutions on February 6, 1924, and definitively on March 2, 1937.
The specific purpose of the Congregation is the care of the sick in hospitals or at home, and any charitable work aimed at alleviating the suffering of those in pain.
In 1947 it had 17 houses with 243 sisters.
FRANCISCAN SISTERS OF THE B.V.M., HELP OF CHRISTIANS. — A religious institute founded in Cartagena (Colombia) by Sister Bernarda Butler (1848–1924) with five companions who had come from Switzerland, where they had professed vows in the monastery of Maria Hilf in Altstätten. It soon spread widely in Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil, and today has 34 houses where 312 sisters are engaged in teaching and works of assistance.