Since 1871, the
Josephites have been in the mission of serving the African American community. After Cardinal Herbert Vaughn opened a school named St. Joseph College of the Sacred Heart in Mill Hill, England, he asked the pope for a mission field. The pope sent him to the United States, where the Archbishop of Baltimore, Martin John Spalding, had been looking for help in ministering to the newly freed slaves. Moving to Baltimore, Vaughn and fellow missionaries chose St. Joseph as the “first missionary.”
Today, most Josephites work and live in parish settings, mostly in the southern USA.