The 55th General Chapter of our Congregation asked various structures to reflect on restructuration. It was a call to transformation, on the recognition of our vulnerability. It is an invitation to "partner with others to birth a new way of being", making place for the new.
The Province of Medellin, always inspired by Providence, makes the way of the Church, following in the footsteps of the humble, pious and charitable Marie Poussepin, making of its mission, a simple and close preaching that continues to be a fire that lights other fires, so that the Gospel may stroll through its paths with audacity and prudence. A history that is born in the generosity of the response of many to the ever-new call of God, proposed in the style of Blessed Marie Poussepin. Some milestones in this history of salvation: After their arrival in Colombia on June 21, 1873, the Sisters arrived in Medellin three years later, on July 16, 1876, to offer services of charity at the St. John of God Hospital, today St. Vincent de Paul Hospital. The communities and works grew, as did the number of Sisters, who responded to the freshness of the charism, which proposed a new way of serving others.
In 1971. the sisters were sent from the Province of USA for a foundation in India. They ar-rived in a village called Kuttikad, Kerala, a small state in the south west corner of the country and formed a community there. Slow and steady growth, formed India to be a Region under the leadership of Sr. Mary Patricia Sullivan, USA on July 26, 1975. Twenty years later, it became a Vice Province on December 31, 1995 with Sr. Vimala Vadakkumpadan as its first Vice Provincial Superior and on January 1, 2009 erected India as a Province having Sr. Mariamma Paul Ollukaran as its first Provincial. She was succeeded by Sr. Philomina Vengachottil in 2014 and Sr. Deepa Moonjely since 2019.
In the history of the Congregation's presence in the Middle East, the obstacles and problems in sowing the charism were enormous: not only because of differences in men-tality, language, customs, or religious rites but also because of epidemics that decimated the population. Some sisters died, also because of poverty and times of famine; more significantly because of the constant years of violence and barbarism, to the point of carrying out massacres of entire villages. Let us remember that when the Congregation arrived in Mesopotamia, the region belonged to the Ottoman Empire, whose method of government was absolutism.
