Society of the Divine Word

The Society of the Divine Word (Latin: Societas Verbi Divini), abbreviated SVD and popularly called the Verbites or the Divine Word Missionaries, and sometimes the Steyler Missionaries, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of Pontifical Right for men. As of 2020, it consisted of 5,965 members composed of priests and religious brothers working in more than 70 countries, now part of VITA international. It is one of the largest missionary congregations in the Catholic Church.[10] Its members add the nominal letters SVD after their names to indicate membership in the Congregation. The superior general is Paulus Budi Kleden who hails from Indonesia.

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The Society was founded in Steyl in the Netherlands in 1875 by Arnold Janssen, a diocesan priest, and drawn mostly from German priests and religious exiles in the Netherlands during the church-state conflict called the Kulturkampf, which had resulted in many religious groups being expelled and seminaries being closed in Germany.

 

Saint Arnold Janssen, SVD (1837-1909), Founder of the Society of the Divine Word.

In 1882, the Society started sending missionaries into China’s Shandong Province, where their aggressive methods were part of the chain of events that led to the Boxer Uprising in the late 1890s. In 1892, missionaries were sent to Togo, a small country in west Africa. The Togo mission was particularly fruitful, for 15 years later the Holy See had appointed an Apostolic prefect. The Society’s third mission was to German New Guinea, (the northern half of present-day Papua New Guinea).[12] A mission was also opened in Paraguay.

 

In the 20th century the Society further expanded, opening communities in Australia,Botswana (Gaborone, Gumare and Ghanzi); Brazil; Canada (Quebec and Ontario); Indonesia; South Africa (Phalaborwa, Polokwane and Pretoria); the United States of America (Appalachia and Illinois); and Zambia (Kabwe, Livingstone, and Lusaka). Additional European communities were established in Austria (Bischofshofen near Salzburg and Vienna); the Netherlands (Tegelen); Rome; the United Kingdom and in the Silesian area in Poland (where Fr. Mirosław Piątkowski invented in 1994 a new devotion, the Chaplet of the Holy Spirit and His Seven Gifts).