About Us

The Congregation of the Missionary Brothers of Saint Francis of Assisi (C.M.S.F.) is an International Society of Religious Brothers founded in 1901 in India by Brother Paulus Moritz of Germany. It was canonically erected on 21st February 1901 by Bishop Chrochet at Nagpur, India and was approved by the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide on 8th January 1921. It is a Religious Missionary Institute of Pontifical Rite under the Sacred Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. The Congregation follows the Rule of the Third Order Regular of Saint Francis of Assisi.

The first Mother House of the CMSF was erected at Khandwa. In 1908 the Brothers started their work at Mount Poinsur, Borivli West, in the Archdiocese of Bombay and from 1930, after the first General Chapter, the Mother House along with the Generalate were shifted to this place. The revised Constitutions were approved by the Holy See on 29th June 1931 and again renewed and updated in 1985 during the ninth General Chapter and approved by the Holy See.

Owing to the zeal, courage and determination of our Founder late Brother Paulus Moritz and his successors in Office, the Congregation has made rapid progress and founded many Missions. They were mostly in the ecclesiastical units of Nagpur, Bombay, Daman, Krishnagar, Agra, Indore, Dinajpur, Allahabad, Varanasi, Mysore, Jhansi, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Mylapore, Madras, Delhi, Alapuzha, Cochin, Thiruvananthapuram, Quilon, Pondicherry, Thiruvalla, Kottar, Selam, Vijayapuram, Bangalore. Shillong, Guwahati, Tura, Diphu, Tezpur etc. A good number of these missions which were well developed have been handed over to the Dioceses which have turned them into parishes, while others like Krishnagar, Dinajpur, Meerut and Khandwa have been formed into dioceses by the Holy See. Today, the Congregation is well established in India, Sri Lanka, Paraguay and Bolivia.