Real Company of Santa Maria della Mercede

The Real Compagnia di Santa Maria della Mercede - as the Royal Society of Our Lady of the Ransom of the Captives - is an international lay organisation (CIC can. 299) with its own legal personality (CIC can. 322).

​

It is a lay branch of the Mercedarian Order, which was founded by King James I of Aragon and St Peter Nolasco in 1218 as a "royal, military and celestial order" for the liberation of Christian slaves from the Moors.

​

The Compagnia maintains the original tradition of the lay members of the Mercedarian Order. As hospital brothers and sisters, as diplomats and sailors and also as knights, they determined the work of the order in the first centuries of its existence.

 

Today, Roman Catholic men and women belong to the Compagnia as professi, professi di devozione and priests as pastors. It is led by a Governatore, always a professo di devozione, and reports to the Master General of the Mercedarian Order.