The Institute of the Missionaries of Mary then began to develop rapidly. On 12th August 1885 the Laudatory Decree, and that of affiliation to the Order of Friars Minor were issued. The Constitutions were approved ad experimentum on 17th July 1890 and definitively on 11th May 1896. Missionaries were sent regularly to the most perilous and distant places overcoming all obstacles and boundaries.

The zeal of the Foundress knew no bounds in responding to the calls of the poor and the abandoned. She was particularly interested in the promotion of women and the social question: with intelligence and discretion she offered collaboration to the pioneers who were working in these spheres, which they appreciated very much.

Her intense activity drew its dynamism from contemplation of the great mysteries of faith. For Mary of the Passion, all led back to the Unity-Trinity of God Truth-Love, who communicates Himself to us through the paschal mystery of Christ. It was in union with these mysteries that, in an ecclesial and missionary dimension, she lived her vocation of offering. Jesus in the Eucharist was for her, "the great missionary" and Mary, in the disponibility of her «Ecce», traced out for her the path of unconditional donation to the work of God. Thus she opened her Institute to the horizons of universal mission, accomplished in Francis of Assisi's evangelical spirit of simplicity, poverty and charity.

She took great care, not only of the external organization of the works, but above all of the spiritual formation of the religious. Gifted with an extraordinary capacity for work, she found time to compose numerous writings on formation, whilst by frequent correspondence she followed her missionaries dispersed throughout the world, relentlessly calling them to a life of holiness. In 1900 her Institute received the seal of blood through the martyrdom of seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, who were beatified in 1946 and canonised during the Great Jubilee of the year 2000. To be the spiritual mother of these missionaries who had known how to live to the shedding of their blood, the ideal proposed by her, was for Mary of the Passion, both a great sorrow, a great joy and a time of great emotion.

Worn out by the fatigue of incessant journeys and daily labour, Mary of the Passion, after a brief illness, died peacefully in San Remo on 15th November 1904, leaving more than 2,000 religious and eighty-six houses scattered about the four continents. Her mortal remains repose in a private oratory of the General House of the Institute of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Rome.

San Remo - the bedroom where
Mother Mary of the Passion died.

The tomb in the "Blue Chapel"
 in the Generalate House in Rome.