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In 1888 Maria Droste entered...

in the convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Münster.

In times when industrialization in the newly established German Empire progressed rapidly, poor people in particular were taken care of and homeless women and help-seeking prostitutes were taken into the houses of the congregation.

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In January 1894 she was sent to Lisbon...

as assistant to the provincial superior in Portugal, Anna von Schorlemer, also a Westphalian noblewoman.

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In May 1894 she was appointed 3rd Superior of the Monastery of the Good Shepherd, which was only founded in 1881 in the working-class district of Paranhos in the city of Porto.

There, too, she cared for the poor, learned the drawbacks of rapid industrialization, and cared for the girls and women pushed into poverty and prostitution.

Her noble birth aided her in her efforts to obtain the necessary financial resources from wealthy nobles and factory owners.

There she met the Benedictine abbot Ildefons Schober in 1895, who became her spiritual leader, with whom she maintained a lively correspondence.

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