Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters' founders

janssen Saint Arnold Janssen
November 5, 1837 - January 15, 1909
Canonized October 5, 2003

After completing studies at the University of Bonn, Germany Arnold Janssen studied for the priesthood and was ordained August 15, 1861. His first assignment was a diocesan boys' high school, where he served as teacher and vice-principal for twelve years. Father Arnold's mounting concern for the foreign missions led him to resign the teaching post in order to devote time to editing the "Little Messenger of the Sacred Heart", through which he hoped to promote prayer for the interest in the missions.

Father Arnold eventually opened a foreign mission seminary in 1875 in Steyl, Holland, but the entire project seemed near collapse when two of the original three co-workers left. However, his Society of the Divine Word is one of the largest missionary societies in the Church today.

Recognizing woman's place in spreading the Faith and advised by experienced mission workers to establish his own group of Sisters, Father Arnold founded the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Spirit in 1889. Today these Sisters span six continents and engage in all types of Christian charity.

Father Arnold was haunted by the dream of introducing perpetual adoration in one of his religious families, and in 1896 he formed the cloistered branch of the Mission Sisters with this goal in mind. The initial group of five Sisters expanded and is today a separate congregagtion, the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters, that numbers 450 Sisters in convents around the world.

Mother Mary Michaele
Co-Foundress
January 7, 1862 - February 25,1934

Born in Westphalia, Germany, Mother Mary Michaele pursued the teaching profession before joining Father Janssen's newly formed women's missionary congregation. Invested with the blue habit and white veil of the Mission Sisters, Sister Michaele made temporary vows with them and was later appointed for the African Missions. The appointment was cancelled and she became one of the founding group to receive the rose-colored habit and white scapular and veil of the cloistered branch on December 8, 1896. A year later Mother Mary Michaele was chosen acting superior of the cloistered community. Later she was elected superior general, an office she exercised until her death.

Through Mother Mary Michaele's efforts, the Congregation of the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters received its own Rule and became an independent foundation. She supervised the erection of the Motherhouse, was instrumental in having perpetual exposition introduced into the congregation, and she herself chose the Roman Breviary for the Sisters' choir prayer. In addition she introduced the special nocturnal intercessory prayer for priests and gave the Congregation an international character by opening chapels of perpetual adoration in the United States, Germany, the Philippines, and China.

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