Sister Mary Prema Pierick, M.C., is the current (2012) Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity of Calcutta, India, the religious institute founded by the Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata).
She was born Mechthild Pierick on 13 May 1953, in a farming community in Reken, Germany. In 1980, after reading the biography of the foundress, Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge, she went to meet Mother Teresa in Berlin. She felt called to join her work and moved to India to join the Missionaries.
Pierick eventually became the Regional Superior of the institute for the Sisters in Europe. She returned to India to supervise the tertianship program of the institute, the last stage of training before final religious profession. She succeeded Sister Nirmala Joshi as Superior General on 24 March 2009, heading an institute which had over 5,000 members worldwide at that time.
Famous quotes containing the words sister and/or mary:
“For she has made me the laily worm
That lies at the fit o’ the tree,
An’ my sister Masery she’s made
The machrel of the sea.”
—Unknown. The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea (l. 5–8)
“The traveller on the prarie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)