The Origins

Those were difficult times. Mexico was just emerging from one of its most painful chapters: the Revolution, a heroic feat of a people struggling to claim their fundamental rights, but which, among its negative consequences, had brought religious persecution: churches closed, expatriate bishops, priests, and religious sisters. Many priests, religious and laypeople who fought for in defense of the faith were killed.

In these circumstances of uncertainty and risk, on December 25, 1914, in the Chapel of the Roses in Tepeyac (Mexico City), the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit was born. It was Christmas, a celebration of hope that remembered the birth of Jesus, celebrated that year under challenging moments of gloomy uncertainty. What humanly seemed a great imprudence - founding a Congregation amid the Revolution - in God's plans happened on the best of days: on the day when the Church celebrates a God who was born in human flesh in poverty and persecution to free us from all slavery. And it happened in the place where Our lady of Guadalupe made herself present to Juan Diego, a simple and poor indigenous person, to express her maternal love and offer her protection to a Nation born into poverty, violence, and oppression.