PIE MADRI DELLA NIGRIZIA. – Religious congregation dependent on Propaganda, founded in 1872 in Verona by Comboni (v.) with the support of the diocesan bishop, Cardinal di Canossa, for female missionary cooperation in Central Africa. Its beginnings were arduous, but, owing to the apostolic spirit instilled in it by its founder and the solid formation imparted by its first superior, Maria Bellezzoli (1824–1901), it soon established itself.
The first sisters were taken to Africa by Comboni himself (1877). The Mahdist revolution (1882–98), which held some sisters prisoner in the Sudan and prevented others from going there, halted the Institute’s development for several years, after which it resumed vigorously. It currently numbers 1,500 sisters distributed among 113 houses, located in Italy (motherhouse in Verona), England, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, and Uganda. In the missions, which still constitute the Institute’s principal purpose, the sisters carry out all the charitable, welfare, and educational activities proper to the missionary religious. The Congregation received the «decretum laudis» in 1897 and definitive approval in 1906.