When Angela Merici founded the Company, she did not dedicated it to any specific work or to any common activity. The places and the forms of her daughters’ work (today as then) varied in relation to their own social situation, to their own commitments - occupational, familial, and apostolic.
Whatever might be the sphere of their occupations or of their activities, there they are called to “do honour to Jesus Christ”as they have become his “true and virginal spouses”.
Therefore, the Company of St. Ursula was born without any work, and thus there is no purpose of charitable assistance that belongs to its specific charism.
However, in the course of the centuries, this spiritual family has become involved in very many charitable and social works, drawn by the mature awareness of a Daughter of St. Angela so that, in each of these ways, they have given life to an undertaking that makes charity concrete, in response to particular historic situations burdened with moral and material poverty.
Obviously, the activities have also evolved according to the passage of time and the changing social, economic, and religious context. The characteristic element that accompanies all these experiences - and this appears particularly Merician - is attention to the situation of women and to the problems linked to woman’s full human, spiritual and social integration. We offer here only a few brief sketches relative to the history and the present significance of some works that the Company continues to support today. We offer here only a few brief sketches relative to the history and the present significance of some works that the Company continues to support today.