Spirituality
We offer spiritual guidance, Ignatian excercises and retreats.
Since 4 November 2025, the two branches of Mary Ward’s Institute are officially and legally One. IBVM and CJ shape their future together as Congregatio Jesu.
Members of the now united congregation celebrated this special moment in the history of Mary Ward’s Institute on 4 November 2025 in Loyola, Spain, the birthplace of Saint Ignatius.
From this day onwards, the around 1,800 sisters living and working in over 40 countries worldwide, follow Jesus in the footsteps of their common foundress, the Venerable Mary Ward, as one congregation of religious women – closely connected to many lay friends and companions.
To celebrate the merger between IBVM and CJ, we have assembled photos of the sisters from all our Provinces and Regions, as well as portraits of the General Superiors throughout the centuries, into a large mosaic. Together, they form the familiar portrait of the Venerable Mary Ward. A powerful sign of sisterhood and solidarity.
To visually express our new, united path, we have given our cross a new colour. Green represents nature but stands also for hope, growth and harmony. It is associated with freshness, fertility and new beginnings. Green is the colour of the liturgy during normal times – when the mission is done.
In 1609, Mary Ward, an Englishwoman who received a revelation from God to be a trailblazer for women religious, founded a new and innovative religious congregation. In the “Institutum”, as she called it in the first draft of the new congregation’s rules, women religious were to live according to the same rules and spirituality as the Jesuits founded by Ignatius of Loyola in the previous century.
