Society of the Divine Word

The Society of the Divine Word, popularly known as the Verbites or Divine Word Missionaries, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right for men, established at Steyl in the Netherlands in 1875 by the diocesan priest Arnold Janssen. Its formation emerged from the Kulturkampf, a church state conflict in Germany that expelled religious groups and closed seminaries, so that many of the society's early recruits were German priests and religious exiles seeking refuge in the Netherlands. As of 2020 the society comprised 5,965 members, priests and religious brothers together, working across more than 70 countries, ranking among the largest missionary congregations in the Catholic Church, with its General Motherhouse in Rome.