History
We are an international community founded
in Algeria in 1939 by Magdeleine Hutin. She was born in
1898 in a small village on the French-German border, the
youngest of six children. By 1925 she was the sole
support of her mother, having lost the rest of her immediate
family to war or illness.
Growing up along a border which was
constantly in question and having been displaced by war, the
pain of divisions left a deep imprint upon her spirituality.
Magdeleine wanted her life to somehow reach across that
which separates people from one another, to be a sign of love
to those who were rejected by others.
While she desired to be a religious, due
to poor health none of the orders she knew of would accept her.
Magdeleine waited 20 years for some kind
of sign that she should go to North Africa to follow in the
footsteps of Charles de Foucauld.
Her dreams were considered foolishness.
The hoped for sign finally came in the form of a
potentially crippling bout of rheumatism when her doctor
advised her to go somewhere where it never rained…
She immediately left for Algeria (1936)
with her mother and one companion, Anne, who eventually left.
After two years of intense work, she asked to spent time
in the novitiate of the Sisters of Africa (the White Sisters as
they were known) where, at the urging of the Bishop, she wrote
her Constitutions and made her first vows on Sept. 29, 1939.
With her mother circa 1940
As World War II was breaking out ls
Magdeleine was forced to return to France. She used that
time to share her dream with anyone who would listen to her.
Soon others began joining her.
It began as a small group geared only to
presence among the nomads of the Sahara Desert and in the midst
of Islam.
In order to be able to visit the nomadic
people who lived in tents outside of the villages, they asked
their first friends in Algeria to teach them how to ride.
LS Magdeleine (center) with an early
group of little sisters at the first mother house in France.
Early nomad community in Algeria with
“neighbors.”
The “top” on their tent
designated their belonging to the particular clan that
“adopted” them.
