Founding of The Poor Servants of The Mother of God
In 1867 Lady Georgiana Fullerton translated the rule of the ‘Little Servant Sisters of the Immaculate Conception’, a rural Polish congregation. She obtained permission from the founder, Edmund Bojanowski, to establish the congregation in England. On 24 October 1868, with the help of Father J. L. Biemans, a Belgian priest working in the Saffron Hill area of London, Frances Taylor took charge of a putative English branch of this congregation. In February 1869, at the invitation of the order of priests, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the community moved to the Catholic mission at Tower Hill, where their ministry included running an industrial school and soup kitchen. It was at that stage, following the death of her mother, that Frances was able to become a permanent member of the group.
From August to September 1869 Frances was engaged on a journey across Europe, in order to see the working of the Polish community and meet its founder. Before returning to England, Frances visited the Mother House of the ‘Servants of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary’ in Antwerp. Mère Jeanne Telghuis, the Founder, advised her to take up laundry work. On 24 September 1869 the future founder and two of her companions were received as postulants.
On 23 January 1870 Frances Taylor took the religious name of Sister Mary Magdalen of the Sacred Heart. When the Archbishop of Posen would not allow Frances’s proposed adaptations to the rule of the Polish congregation, with the advice of her supporters, she founded a separate congregation. The Congregation of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God thus came into being on 12 February 1872, when Frances made her final vows.
In 1874 Frances Taylor met Fr Augustus Dignam SJ, who was shortly to become her spiritual director and an important adviser. In London, the Sisters' principal works were the visitation and nursing of the poor in their own homes, catechising, and also the rescuing of young women from prostitution. Her friend Cardinal Manning remained a firm supporter, and the congregation's early works with the poor were focused on his Archdiocese of Westminster.
Read more about this topic: Frances Margaret Taylor
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