The Society of the Divine Word (Latin: Societas Verbi Divini), 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 VIVAT international. It is one of the largest missionary congregations in the Catholic Church. Its members add the postnominal letters SVD. The superior general is Anselmo Ricardo Ribeiro, who hails from Brazil.
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.
Arnold Janssen (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). A mission was also opened in Paraguay.
Gabriel Wilhelmus Manek (18 August 1913 – 30 November 1989), Archbishop of Endeh and founder of the Daughters of Our Lady Queen of the Holy Rosary, declared as a Servant of God in 2023
12Limbrock, Eberhard (1909). "Society of the Divine Word". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol.5. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 10 April 2020– via New Advent.
↑Cohen, Paul (1997). History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press. pp.19–21.
↑Esherick, Joseph (1987). The Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp.79–88, 123–127.
