These men and women - witnesses of yesterday and today - have the same basic attitudes: openness to God, disponibility to the Spirit, daily commitment to the service of others, true love.
To know the seven martyrs, seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, can help us better understand God's ways in our own lives, and raise up or affirm in us a simple but real commitment to the service of the Gospel.

In 1898, Monsignor Francisco Fagolla, coadjutor bishop of Shanxi (China), came to Rome. He wanted to have a community of missionary religious in his far off mission, in that immense country of Asia, where a small nucleus of new Christians was growing. The presence of women was missing to give the image and express the mystery of God's love, revealed in and through Jesus, as yet unknown to this already numerous people, the most numerous on our planet today.

He met Mary of the Passion, Superior General and foundress of the new Congregation which was specifically "missionary", that is to say, its reason of being was to bring the Good News of Salvation to the most difficult and faraway countries.

The missionary bishop made known his needs: to organise a small hospital for the sick who were so numerous … to make of the orphanage, which already counted a few hundred children, a more educative place, … to work for the promotion of women by teaching them all that related to house-keeping, hygiene, food, opening them out to the dignity of work … and awakening them to the faith, to prayer, to singing … so many concrete, urgent, important things. First they would have to learn Chinese to be able to communicate and thus be in unison with the life of the people. This would not be easy: the road to Shanxi was long, dangerous, adventurous.

Mary of the Passion listened. She felt that God wanted her sisters to be sent down there. After long reflection, her response was positive, she accepted the challenge. She searched among her sisters and proposed the new mission to several of them. Little by little, the image of the group was formed, with sisters of different nationalities, as is the case whenever possible, in the Institute of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.

They were seven arriving in Shanxi:

• Marie-Hermine de Jésus, French, aged 33, superior of the community.

• Maria della Pace, Italian, aged 24, the youngest.

• Maria Chiara, Italian, aged 27.

• Marie de Ste Nathalie, French, 35 years of age.

• Marie de Saint Just, French, 33 years of age.

• Marie Adolphine, Dutch, 33 years of age.

• Maria Amandina, Belgian, 27 years of age.

Seven women like ourselves, coming from France, Belgium, Italy and Holland … sent to China for the service of their brothers and sisters for whom, on 9 July 1900, they gave their lives.
Seven religious animated with the desire to serve God, the Church, the mission with their gifts, their limitations, their temperament, their history.
Seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary having one common characteristic: the earnest desire to open their lives to the Spirit and to respond to God's call to the end.