Maryknoll Sisters

The Maryknoll Sisters are a Catholic missionary congregation founded in 1912 in Ossining, Westchester County, New York, by Mary Joseph Rogers, originally under the name Foreign Mission Sisters of St Dominic and formally recognized as a pontifical institute in 1954; members use the post-nominal letters MM. Founded six months after the male Maryknoll community, the sisters dedicated themselves to Catholic missionary work overseas, with an early focus on East Asia including China from 1921 and Korea from 1922, and by 2023 counted approximately 300 women serving across 18 countries in fields including medicine, education, communications, agriculture and social services. Two sisters were martyred during the Second World War, and two more members, Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, were among four American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador in 1980.