In 1889, German priest and scientist, Arnold Janssen, together with German women Helena Stollenwerk and Hendrina Stenmanns, founded the Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters (in Dutch: “Dienaressen van de Heilige Geest” in German: “Dienerinnen des Heiligen Geistes von der ewigen Anbetung”). Already in 1875, he had begun the Divine Word Missionary Priests and Brothers, in the village of Steyl, in the Dutch province of Limburg. He was unable to begin in Germany, because of Chancellor Bismarck’s persecution of the Catholic Church at the time. Their current head office is in Uden in the Netherlands.
It was this organisation that bought Teneriffe and turned it into the Dutch Catholic Hostel.
The organisation also set up a mission in German New Guinea. At the outbreak of WWII the nuns decided to stay in New Guinea but were taken prisoners of war by de Japanese and finally liberated by Australian and American troops and evacuated to Brisbane where the started the Holy Sprit Hospital at Wickham Terrace.
See also: Refugees from Netherlands East Indies recuperating in Australia after WWII
