Our Identity

The abbreviation SVD comes from our official Latin name "Societas Verbi Divini," which means Society of the Divine Word.

We are an international Roman Catholic missionary congregation of priests and brothers counting among its 6000 members men from 62 different countries. Each is ready to leave his home and culture to bring the Gospel to those who have not heard the Good News about Jesus Christ or to local churches that are, at this time, unable to tend to the needs of the Catholic Christians.

In the Philippines, the Divine Word Missionaries arrived in Bangued, Abra, in 1909, founding schools in Bangued, Vigan, in Ilocos Sur and Laoag City in Ilocos Norte, as well as in other parts of the Philippines. Now there are about 500 Filipino SVD priests and brothers and around 150 of them are serving in overseas missions on all continents. In the Philippines, the SVD have three ecclesiastical provinces, namely: the Philippine North (PHN) that comprises missionary works of Pangasinan to Aparri; the Philippine Central (PHC) that covers the National Capital Region,and all the provinces comprising central Luzon, southern Tagalog and the whole Bicol region; and the Philippine South (PHS) whose ministries cover the Visayas and Mindanao Islands. Saint Jude Catholic School, a school in Manila near Malacañan Palace, is an SVD school. The congregation opened Christ the King Mission Seminary in 1934 in Quezon City for their Filipino applicants and from then on their numbers continued to increase eventually making the SVD the largest religious institute of men in the country.