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4 unusual facts about Mary Odilia Berger


Mary Berger

Mary Odilia Berger (1823 – 1880), German-American religious leader, founded Sisters of St. Mary

Mary Odilia Berger

The congregation, through SSM Health Care, today operates in Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

Once in Paris, Berger took part in the charitable works of the Abbé Peter-Victor Braun, who chose her in 1866 to lead the new religious congregation of Sisters Servants of the Sacred Heart he founded to give continuity to their work.

In 1878 a third of the members of the congregation were sent by Mother Odilia to Canton, Mississippi and Memphis, Tennessee during a Yellow Fever outbreak.


Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary

Thus he established three of these volunteers as a religious congregation under the leadership of a Bavarian woman, Sister Anna Katharina Berger, who had come to Paris already a member of a community of Franciscan Sisters founded by the Blessed Paul Joseph Nardini in Pirmasens.


see also

Sisters of St. Mary

Anna Katherine (later Mother Mary Odilia) Berger was born in Regen, Bavaria.