Francis Ball was born in Ireland in 1794, and educated at St. Mary's Convent, a boarding school run by the members of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in York, England.

She heard the unmistakable call of God "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice and all these things will be added unto you."

At the age of twenty, Francis returned to York to enter the novitiate, preparing herself for the foundation of the Institution of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ireland, and made her profession as Mother Teresa.

In 1821 Teresa Ball established the first House of the Institute in Ireland and called it Loreto, the name by which all the subsequent foundations made from Ireland are still known.