The Provincial Superiors and representatives
from the five provinces of our congregation
meet bi-annually in one of the provinces in order to
unite us as Dillingen Franciscans.
There are three large provinces in Germany,
two in Brazil, one in India and
one in the United States.
Although there are no United States-born Sisters from our province serving in foreign missions,
our Provinces in Germany still have Sisters hearing God's call to serve His people in poor nations.
After almost 700 years, the first 24 of our German Sisters first left their homeland in 1913 to
become missionaries to the people of the mid-western United States. Today we have 56 Sisters in
this Province .
In 1937, after the rise of Nazism when our Sister-teachers in Germany were repressed from
teaching in their own country, they emigrated to Brazil. Soon they established two separate
provinces there, one in the north, theAreia Provincein the Amazon area, and the other
headquartered near Rio de Janeiro in the south, theDuque de Caxias Province.
In 1967 the first Sisters to enter our congregation from
Indiamade their profession in Dillingen.
From 1976 to 1980, 14 of these Sisters returned to their homeland from Germany to begin mission
work in poor areas of northern India. In August of 1999 this growing Region was granted the
status of a "province" with all its rights and duties.
