Mother Frances Schervier - Ave Maria Hour

Mary Frances Schervier, (8 January 1819 – 14 December 1876) was the founder of two religious congregations of Religious Sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis, both committed to serving the neediest of the poor. One, the Poor Sisters of St. Francis, is based in her native Germany, and the other, the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, was later formed from its Province in the United States. She was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1974.

Frances Schervier (German: Franziska) was born into a wealthy family in Aachen, Germany. Her father, Johann Heinrich Schervier, was a wealthy needle factory owner and the vice-mayor of Aachen. Her French mother, Maria Louise Migeon, the goddaughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, provided a strict home environment. After the death of both her mother and two sisters from tuberculosis when she was thirteen, Schervier became the homemaker for her father, and developed a reputation for generosity to the poor, from her growing awareness of their desperate conditions.

In a dispute over the rights of the Catholic Church in 1837 (Kölner Wirren), the Prussian government imprisoned the Archbishop of Cologne, Clemens August von Droste-Vischering, causing a great public reaction; the repercussion was a revival of religious spirit, especially in Westphalia and the Rhine country. In the wake of this spiritual awakening, some prominent Aachen ladies started a society for the relief of the poor and approached Schervier's father, Johann, to permit Schervier to join. He agreed at first, but later demurred when she began to nurse the sick in their homes, fearing that she might carry the disease into his own house. Joseph Istas, who was curate at Saint Paul Parish in Aachen and founder of "Saint John's Kitchen" for the poor, deeply impressed Schervier, who began to work very closely with him; but their friendship ended abruptly with Istas' premature death in 1843. The following year she and four other young ladies (Catherine Daverkosen, Gertrude Frank, Joanna Bruchhans, and Catherine Lassen) became president members of the Third Order of St. Francis