Society of the Divine Word
R.C. religious congregation from the Netherlands
The Society of the Divine Word (Latin: Societas Verbi Divini), popularly called the Verbites or the Divine Word Missionaries, and sometimes the Steyler Missionaries, is a Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right for men. As of 2020, it consisted of 5,965 members composed of priests and religious brothers working in more than 70 countries, now part of VIVAT international. It is one of the largest missionary congregations in the Catholic Church. Its members add the postnominal letters SVD. The superior general is Anselmo Ricardo Ribeiro, who hails from Brazil.
History
The Society was founded in Steyl in the Netherlands in 1875 by Arnold Janssen, a diocesan priest, and drawn mostly from German priests and religious exiles in the Netherlands during the church-state conflict called the Kulturkampf, which had resulted in many religious groups being expelled and seminaries being closed in Germany.
In 1882, the Society started sending missionaries into China’s Shandong Province, where their aggressive methods were part of the chain of events that led to the Boxer Uprising in the late 1890s. In 1892, missionaries were sent to Togo, a small country in west Africa. The Togo mission was particularly fruitful, for 15 years later the Holy See had appointed an Apostolic prefect. The Society's third mission was to German New Guinea (the northern half of present-day Papua New Guinea). A mission was also opened in Paraguay.
The public source identifies “Society of the Divine Word” as r.C. religious congregation from the Netherlands. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Society, Divine and Word.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q696656. VIAF identifies the subject as 142000838. The Library of Congress control number is n82125704. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020, 1875, 1882 and 1892.
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This entry incorporates text from “Society of the Divine Word” 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.