PIE MADRI DELLA NIGRIZIA. – Religious congregation dependent on Propaganda, founded in 1872 in Verona by the Servant of God Daniele Combon (v.) with the support of the diocesan bishop Cardinal di Canossa, for the purpose of female missionary cooperation in Central Africa. Its beginnings were laborious, but through the apostolic spirit instilled by the founder and the solid formation imparted by the first superior, Maria Bellezzoli (1824–1901), it soon flourished.
The first sisters were taken to Africa by Comboni himself (1877). The Mahdist revolution (1882–98), which held some sisters captive in Sudan and prevented others from going there, halted the Institute’s development for some years, after which it resumed vigorously. At present it numbers 1,500 sisters distributed across 113 houses, located in Italy (with the generalate in Verona), England, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, and Uganda. In the missions, which remain the Institute’s principal aim, the sisters engage in all the charitable, welfare, and educational activities proper to the missionary religious.
The Congregation received its *decretum laudis* in 1897 and final approval in 1906.