Alexians

The Alexians, officially the Congregation of Alexian Brothers and known in Latin as the Congregatio Fratrum Cellitarum seu Alexianorum, are a Catholic lay religious congregation dedicated to caring for the sick, which emerged in the fourteenth century in Mechelen, Belgium, out of earlier Beghard communities. They formed as a compassionate response to the Black Death, when laymen under a leader named Tobias banded together to care for plague victims cast out of the cities, support their families and bury the dead, living in small cells that gave them their early name of Cellites. Initially an informal association, the brothers adopted the Rule of Saint Augustine and received formal pontifical recognition from Pope Pius IX in 1870, and today, with about 48 members as of 2022, they run healthcare facilities in the United States, Germany, Belgium, England, Ireland, the Philippines and Hungary, though their American operations merged into Ascension Health in 2012. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/