page_title: Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne
section_title: Missionary work
hierarchical_section_title: Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne / Missionary work
caption_attribution_description: English: Ein Kerem, Notre Dame de Sion, Alphons Ratisbonne's tomb
context_page_description: Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne, N.D.S., was a French Jew who converted to Catholicism and became a Jesuit Catholic priest and missionary. He later was a co-founder of the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a religious congregation dedicated to the conversion of Jews to the Catholic faith.
context_section_description: After his own conversion, Théodor Ratisbonne had been drawn to work for the conversion of his fellow Jews to the Christian faith. This proposed ministry, also the inspiration of Alphonse, was blessed by Pope Gregory XVI in the course of a visit by Théodor Ratisbonne to Rome in 1842. Théodor then took up the suggestion made to him by Alphonse to establish a school for Jewish children in a Christian setting. At this time, two Jewish sisters came to him for spiritual advice, and eventually also converted to Christianity. They became the nucleus for the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, founded in 1847.
  
  In 1850 Alphonse became engaged in mission work among convicts in the prisons of Brest, but two years later he felt called to join his brother in this mission to their own people, writing that he 
  recognized that the will of God in my Conversion and in my vocation to the priesthood obviously destined me to work for the salvation of Israel.
   With the authorization of the Jesuit Superior General, Jan Philipp Roothaan, and the blessing of Pope Pius IX, Alphonse left the Society of Jesus to join his brother. The two brothers, with several other priests drawn to their mission, formed the male branch of the Congregation in 1852. Alphonse moved to Palestine in 1855 to open a convent for the Sisters of the congregation. He would spend the rest of his life there.
  In 1858 Ratisbonne established the Convent of Ecce Homo in the Old City of Jerusalem for the Sisters of Sion. In 1860, he built the Convent of St. John on a hilltop in Ein Karem, then a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. In 1874, he founded the Ratisbonne Monastery for the priests of the congregation. (It is now a Salesian study center in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood.)
  Ratisbonne died in Ein Karem on May 6, 1884 and is buried in the cemetery of the convent.
caption: Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne's tomb in Ein Karem
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