Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate
Catholic missionary congregation for men
The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) is a missionary religious congregation in the Catholic Church. It was founded on January 25, 1816, by Eugène de Mazenod, a French priest later recognized as a Catholic saint. The congregation was given recognition by Pope Leo XII on February 17, 1826. As of January 2020, the congregation was composed of 3,631 priests and lay brothers usually living in community. Their traditional salutation is Laudetur Iesus Christus ('Praised be Jesus Christ'), to which the response is Et Maria Immaculata ('And Mary Immaculate'). Members use the post-nominal letters "OMI".
As part of its mission to evangelize the "abandoned poor", OMI are known for their mission among the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and their historic administration of at least 57 schools within the Canadian Indian residential school system. Some of those schools have been associated with cases of child abuse by Oblate clergy and staff.
Foundation
The "Society of Missionaries of Provence" was founded on January 25, 1816, in Aix-en-Provence when Eugene de Mazenod and four companions came together to preach, first with missions in the Provençal dialect, speaking the everyday language of the community.
Born into French nobility in 1782, Eugene de Mazenod fled the French Revolution with his family in 1789.
“Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate” enters the record as catholic missionary congregation for men. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Missionary, Oblates and Mary can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1336967. VIAF identifies the subject as 132469713. The Library of Congress control number is n50073267. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1816, 1826, 2020 and 1782.
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This entry incorporates text from “Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.