Many religious communities have a ready reply to such queries.
In this way, Marie-Therese left the field wide open for successive generations of sisters to respond to the most pressing needs of the moment and of the geographical location. She did, however, leave us with certain criteria, based on her own clear preferences and the experience of the first sisters. Marie-Therese founded the Congregation in 1854, at the time of the Industrial Revolution in France. As a young girl living a very sheltered family life in a small rural town in the south of France, she saw her peers of the poorer classes leaving home to work in factories and workshops in the nearby city of Toulouse. From them, she learned much about the harsh working and living conditions especially of young teenage girls, leaving home for the first time.