History

Our Founder is the Servant of God, Bishop Frederick Kaiser Depel MSC. (Missionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus), the first Prelate of the Prelature of Caravelí.

He arrived in Peru in 1939, and in 1957 he was appointed Ordinary of the new Prelature of Caravelí-Peru, a territory almost entirely Andean and very rugged. A jurisdiction of 30,000 km2, with an altitude of 1800 meters above sea level. At that time there were a dozen diocesan priests and no nuns.

When he could not find priests or religious sisters for the pastoral care of his faithful, the Servant of God, in a sleepless night when he could not sleep, worried about “the cry of the Andes” – as he himself said – conceived the idea of founding a Congregation of Religious Sisters, whose special purpose would be to live in remote, abandoned and poor places. Sharing the abandonment of those people and at the same time, relieving them through the apostolate, attending to their spiritual health first and also their physical health. This idea haunted him.

Because of the lack of priests, these nuns would do everything for which a priestly character is not required. A priest would go to those places three, four, five… times a year, finding the people instructed in religion to attend Holy Mass fruitfully and to receive the sacraments well. Thus, the priest could – helped in everything by the nuns – in a few days obtain a harvest such as would not have been possible before.

As a humble subject, he asked the opinion of the Nuncio in Peru, Bishop Romulo Carboni, who encouraged him to carry out the work. On the other hand, very discreetly, he spoke with an experienced nun because he knew that he needed the help of an authentic nun for the formation of his missionaries.

“Mother, if one day I dare to found this Congregation, would you help me?”

– She answered, “Of course, Monsignor! Of course!”

The nun’s name was Mother Wilibrordis. And in the hidden valley of Caravelí, on June 22, 1961, Monsignor Kaiser founded the Pious Union of the Missionary Sisters of Jesus, Word and Victim, together with Mother Wilibrordis, who became Co-Foundress.

The Pious Union was elevated to Diocesan Law on March 25, 1971, spreading its missionary work in the Prelature of Caravelí and later in other dioceses of Peru.

In 1979 it crossed the borders, founding the first Patmos (this is how we call our mission centers) in Argentina and Bolivia.

On September 14, 1982, St. John Paul II elevated the foundation of the Missionary Sisters of Jesus, Word and Victim to a Congregation of Pontifical Right.