PIOUS MOTHERS OF NIGRIZIA. - Religious congregation dependent on Propaganda, founded in 1872 in Verona by the servant of God Daniele Comboni (v.) with the support of the diocesan bishop Cardinal di Canossa, for female missionary cooperation in central Africa. Its beginnings were laborious, but thanks to the apostolic spirit infused in it by the founder and the solid formation imparted by the first superior Maria Bellezzoli (1824-1901), it soon established itself.

The first sisters were led 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 development of the Institute for some decades, after which it vigorously resumed. At present it numbers 1,500 sisters distributed among 113 houses, scattered across Italy (generalate house in Verona), England, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Eritrea, the Sudan, and Uganda. In the missions, which even today 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.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: anon., Memorie dell'Istituto P. M. della N. ecc., Verona 1902; anon., Nella luce di un cinquantenario, ibid. 1926; U. Mariani, Lucerna ardens, ibid. 1946.

Agostino Capovilla

@incollection{ec9_pie_madri_della_nigrizia, author = {Capovilla, Agostino}, title = {Pie Madri della Nigrizia}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {1356}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/pie-madri-della-nigrizia} }

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Pious Mothers of the Negroes

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