The MSP presence in the United States for 30 years started as a partnership with the American St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), a community of priests and brothers established in 1871 to serve the African American Catholic Community. It all began in 1981 with a letter of appeal from the Late Fr. James Sheerin, SPS, the then Vocations/Promotion Director of the National Missionary Seminary of St Paul to the Josephites.