About

Who we are

The Society of Mary — known in English as the Marist Fathers — is a missionary congregation of priests and brothers in the Catholic Church. It was born of a promise made by a group of young seminarians at the shrine of Fourvière, in Lyon, on 23 July 1816: to form a society bearing the name of Mary and devoted to the mission of the Church.

Under Jean-Claude Colin, who gave the Society its Constitutions and its spirit, the Marists were approved by Pope Gregory XVI in 1836 and immediately entrusted with the mission of Western Oceania. From those first journeys the Society has kept a missionary character: Marists expect to be sent.

Our spirituality

Marist spirituality is not devotional decoration. It is a way of acting. Father Colin asked his confrères to be “unknown and hidden in this world” — to do the work of the Gospel without drawing attention to themselves, to carry mercy to those who feel far from God, and to be present the way Mary was present in the early Church: supporting, encouraging, and pointing always to Christ.

This is why a Marist is formed to ask, before anything else, what this community actually needs — rather than arriving with a programme.

Our mission in Africa

The Marist presence in Africa has grown into parishes, schools, formation houses and mission stations served largely by African Marists themselves. Much of the life of this website — the events, the missions, the members, the pages of Acho d’Afrique — comes out of that work.

Our communities are small and our resources are modest. What we can offer is continuity: staying long enough for the work to belong to the people who will carry it after us.

How we live

We live in community, pray together, and share what we have. We profess chastity, poverty and obedience. The work differs from place to place; the common life and the Marist spirit do not.

A Marist day has a shape to it: morning prayer and Mass, the work of the apostolate, a shared meal, Evening Prayer. It is unremarkable, and it is the thing that makes the rest possible.