The Congregation of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus is a missionary institute founded on 15 January 1931 by Mother Mary (Maddalena) Charles Walker, who felt called to the African missions in 1920. With the agreement of Pope Pio XI, who granted her special permission, she left in October 1923 for Calabar, in southern Nigeria, to assist in the work of evangelization and in any other work that could improve the people’s standard of living. Mother Maddalena was not only an educator but also a nurse, a social worker and an evangelizer; at the centre of her life was Jesus in the Eucharist, without whom, she said, “there is an immense loneliness”, and so that she herself might become bread offered and broken for her brothers and sisters.
Her desire to establish a religious congregation came to fruition when four of her students at St. Joseph’s Convent School expressed the desire to become sisters, thus becoming the first members of the Congregation of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus. On 15 January 1931, the day the Congregation was effectively founded, for the first time in Nigeria and West Africa, these four young women offered their lives to chastity, poverty and obedience.
The Congregation was canonically recognized by Bishop James Moynagh, prefect of Calabar, in April 1937 and, in 1971, under Pope Paolo VI, it was recognized by the Holy See as a Congregation of Pontifical Right.
The Congregation, comprising approximately 950 sisters, is international in character, with several communities in Africa, America and Europe and, more precisely, in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Togo, Sierra Leone, Kenya, England, Italy, Germany, the United States, Canada and Grenada.
Charism
The charism is “All Embracing Charity”, that is, “Charity that embraces everything“.
The model on which the Congregation is based is linked to the words spoken by the Virgin Maria: “I am the Handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). These words are marked by profound faith, humility and absolute fidelity to Divine Providence, from which the charism of “All-embracing Charity” is drawn and manifested in the motto “Love and Service”.