Company of Mary

The Company of Mary, formally the Societas Mariae Monfortana and also called the Montfort Missionaries, is a Catholic missionary congregation of priests and lay brothers founded by Saint Louis de Montfort, who began conceiving the society around 1700 in search of what he described as a poor and small company of good priests for missionary work. Montfort died in 1716 before the congregation gained a formal structure, and successors including Father Adrien Vatel and Father Rene Mulot kept the mission alive; after the French Revolution disrupted the community, Father Gabriel Deshayes reorganized it and secured papal recognition from Pope Leo XII. It forms one part of the wider Montfortian Family alongside the Daughters of Wisdom and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel, and today it maintains parishes, seminaries, schools and mission stations across Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe, with particular strength in Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/