Who Are We?

Divine Word Missionaries is a Roman Catholic religious order of professed missionaries, both priests and brothers. Founded in 1875 by St. Arnold Janssen, a German priest, it has grown to beome the 7th largest community of male religious in the Catholic Church with 7,000 professed members working in 86 countries today.

We are pastors, catechists, educators, experts in communications, formators, professionals, agriculturists, researchers and scholars, architects, doctors, social consultants. We believe that it is God’s loving grace that has gathered us from various peoples and continents into a religious missionary community dedicated to the Divine Word and His mission to the world.

We are motivated by the vision of St. Arnold that "the darkness of sin and the night of unbelief might vanish before the light of the gospel and that the heart of Jesus might live in the hearts of all people".

English