Mary Frances Schervier (3 January 1819 – 14 December 1876) was the founder of two religious congregations of religious sisters of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis, both committed to serving the neediest of the poor. One, the Poor Sisters of St. Francis, is based in her native Germany, and the other, the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, was later formed from its province in the United States. She was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1974.
Frances Schervier (German: Franziska) was born into a wealthy family in Aachen, Germany. Her father, Johann Heinrich Schervier, was a wealthy needle factory owner and the vice-mayor of Aachen. Her French mother, Maria Louise Migeon, the goddaughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, provided a strict home environment. After the death of both her mother and two sisters from tuberculosis when she was thirteen, Schervier became the homemaker for her father, and developed a reputation for generosity to the poor, from her growing awareness of their desperate conditions.
In 1845 Schervier's life took an unexpected turn: her father died and a family friend, Getrude Frank, told Schervier that she was called to serve God and He would show her in whose company. She considered joining the Trappistines, but instead of entering an existing convent, on 3 October 1845 she and four other women left their homes to establish a religious community devoted to caring for the poor under Schervier's leadership. With the permission of a priest, they went to live together in a small house beyond St. James's Gate, and Schervier was chosen superior of the community. The life of the Sisters was conventual, and their time spent in religious exercises, household duties, and caring for the sick poor. They formed the nucleus of the community that became known as the Poor Sisters of St. Francis.
When Schervier died, there were 2,500 members of her congregation worldwide. The number kept growing until the 1970s, when, like many other religious orders, they began to experience a sharp decline in membership. After a formal investigation into her life requested of the Holy See by the Archbishop of Cincinnati and the declaration of a miraculous cure of a man in Ohio, Schervier was beatified in 1974 by Pope Paul VI.
In 1959, the American province of the congregation separated from the German branch, to become an independent congregation called the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor. They have their headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. They are still engaged in operating a hospital and a home for the aged in Walden, New York, but have transferred the ownership of many of their institutions to other organizations. The Frances Schervier Home and Hospital was founded by the Sisters in the Bronx, New York, and named in her honor. (It too has been transferred as of 2000 to a medical chain but continues to operate under this name.) Currently this Congregation focuses on health care, pastoral ministries, and social service.
She is remembered on December 14.