BROTHERS OF OUR LADY OF MERCY. - A religious institute founded at Mechelen in 1839 by Msgr. Victor G. B. Scheppers for the exercise of the manifold works of mercy and charity in hospitals, prisons, and insane asylums, but especially for the instruction and education of youth.
In 1855, besides the schools at Mechelen, Oliven, and Alessandria, the Brothers directed the prisons at Vilvoorde, Ghent, and Namur, and, at the invitation of Cardinal Wiseman, opened in London the first Catholic house of re-education. In Rome, Pius IX in 1854 entrusted to the nascent institute the direction of the reformatory of St. Balbina, which became a model of re-education for its time. In 1870 there were seven houses in Rome, including hospitals, orphanages, prisons, agricultural schools (Vigna Pia), and the Pontifical School of Piazza Pia, where in 1904 Maestro Lorenzo Perosi founded the school of boy singers of the Sistine Chapel. Pius X in 1912 entrusted to the Brothers the "Pius X" school in the Vatican, which after the Lateran Treaty was transferred to Via dei Cavalieri del Santo Sepolcro. At present the Brothers also have colleges at Fabriano, Jesu, and Busnago. Abroad, they carry on their work, in addition to Belgium, in the Netherlands, England, Canada, Argentina, and Uruguay. The institute, like other similar teaching institutes, is lay, bound by simple and perpetual vows, and numbers over 400 religious in 35 houses. Recently they have obtained that one or two religious from each house may be ordained priests to meet the spiritual needs of the house itself.