| Who
We Are and What We Do
The Congregation
of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM)
is a community of 485 Catholic women religious whose roots date
back to 1845.
The IHM Congregation
came to be because our founders, Theresa Maxis Duchemin and
Louis Florent Gillet, were on fire with love of God and love
of neighbor. In 1845, Theresa, one of the four founding members
of the Oblates Sisters of Providence, and Louis, a Redemptorist
priest, left their ministries on the east coast of the United
States to travel to frontier Michigan. They left all that was
familiar to them because they knew that the people of Monroe,
Michigan had no one to minister to their spiritual needs, educate
their children in the faith or give them skills to overcome
obstacles blocking the full realization of their God-given dignity
and potential.
Theresa and Louis
were great-souled visionaries with an acute sensitivity to the
urgent needs of their times and an unremitting orientation to
life and to the future. Their zeal for mission, generosity of
spirit, courage, resourcefulness and confidence in God's loving
providence enabled them to convert dreams to deeds. They were
prophets of vision and pilgrims of a dream. In the depths of
their hearts they realized that for those who love, the impossible
becomes possible.
Our history since
those beginning days is a long and joyful course of hope and
vitality, proclaimed through lives of prayer, a communal lifestyle
and works of education, healthcare, social service and pastoral
and spiritual ministries.
Our works have historically
taken us into a world struggling with crises of faith, commitment
and social responsibility. In response to the urgent needs of
the times, we have worked to meet the critical needs of people
throughout the United States and in Latin America. Living the
vows of chastity, poverty and obedience as signs of hope to
the world, we are especially committed to works that manifest
special concern, service and advocacy for the economically poor
and spiritually neglected.
Theresa and Louis
gave birth to the IHM legacy of loving service. This legacy
lives on in the hearts and lives of our sisters today. It is
the inner energy that inspires us as a Congregation to embrace
the future with faith, joyfulness, courage and willingness to
live in and through the challenges of our times.
We respond to those
challenges today in a variety of ministries: |
