In 1609 a group of women joined her with the intention to follow her wherever she went. She came back to Saint Omer accompanied by five of them. There they led a community life and devoted themselves to educate the young. They also founded their first school in the style of the one the Jesuits had nearby. This was the modest start of the new Institute she was to found.

    In 1611 she was illuminated and this would definitely guide the apostolic work of the incipient Institute. In a letter to the Nuncio she expressed her desire to assume the same rules as the Jesuits, both in contents and form, except for what is forbidden by God due to sex diversity.

    After Saint Omer, the first house Mary Ward founded was in London in 1613. It was natural that Mary wanted to lay the foundations for the Institute definitely, so she decided to go to Rome herself in order to manage the affair before the Holy See. In other words, she sought the approval for her Institute. It was the year 1621.

    Mary was received by Gregorio XV, who stated: "God has looked onto His Church just in time". She was allowed to open a school in Rome. Later on she founded schools in Naples and Perugia. Subsequently, she headed for the Catholic Bavaria.
She had prosperous years that were cut short on January 13, 1631 when Urbano VIII signed and announced the Bull "Pastoralis Romani Pontificis", which was one of the hardest sent out by the Holy See. This Bull put forward unfair accusations against her work and gave the order to suppress the Institute.

    On February 7^th of that same year, Mary was imprisoned in Munich by order of the Inquisition and charged with being "heretic, schismatic and rebel to the Holy Church". After the suppression and the imprisonment of the foundress, eleven houses were closed down and 300 nuns were granted dispensation of their vows to return to their houses: in the Institute there were Italian, Spanish, French, German, Flemish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Austrian and Irish nuns.

In April she came out of prison and went to Rome, where Urbano VIII, moved by Mary Ward?s personality, allowed her to open a small house in Rome.

After some years Mary Ward died in York. In her gravestone the following words can be read: "To love the poor, to persist in that love, to live, die and resuscitate with them; this was the motto and aspiration of Mary Ward, who having lived 60 years and 8 days, passed away on January 30th, 1645".    She died with the apparent disappointment of someone who felt that the work of so many years had been destroyed, but peacefully and with the serenity of someone who, accepting God?s will, devoted herself generously without demanding any thing in exchange.    Nobody in Rome imagined that such a powerful Institute could arise from the group of nuns that were faithful to her.