PUMA, Tanzania — A flourishing missionary congregation in the Tanzanian desert, founded against the odds by a holy and diminutive Bavarian-born religious sister who had an unwavering trust in God, celebrated its 50th jubilee on July 21.
More than 800 local laity and religious, led by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, took part in the festivities, which recalled the remarkable life and witness of Mother Maria Stieren (1923-2008), the founder of the Mothers and Missionaries of the Holy Cross in Puma, near Singida in central Tanzania.
“Here in Puma, and other places where the Mothers and Missionaries of the Holy Cross work, is the true springtime of the Church — a time where the flowers again flourish and bring light and joy,” said Bishop Schneider during the jubilee Mass.
Mother Maria founded the congregation in 1976 after receiving, like St. Teresa of Calcutta, a “call within a call” while she served as a German missionary Benedictine sister in Ndanda in the southern part of Tanzania in the 1960s and ’70s.
Impelled by a need for greater reverence for the Eucharist, and after much discernment, she followed the Lord’s promptings to leave her successful educational work at the Benedictine Abbey in Ndanda and, with five of her female students, embarked on an extraordinary journey to establish a new congregation in a place of most need.
Arriving near Singida with her students but nothing more than $4 in her pocket and her breviary in her shoulder bag, she set about creating a mission that over the past half-century has expanded to include a large hospital, health centers and orphanages, a junior seminary, a girls’ school, and a preschool and primary school.
The congregation has also expanded beyond Tanzania, opening a mission in Anápolis, Brazil, in the 1990s that provides education for street children and orphans. In Germany, it has a home for the elderly in Albbruck near Freiburg. In total, today the congregation has 81 sisters, 21 priests and 13 brothers…
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My biography of Mother Maria, God’s Mighty Little Missionary: The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Mother Maria Stieren, will be published in October by Sophia Institute Press and is available for pre-order. All of the author royalties from the book will be donated to the congregation.
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