Jesuits, the Church’s flagship religious order, plot a new course

Inés San Martín

October 11, 2016

VATICAN CORRESPONDENT



Father Adolfo Nicolas, superior general of the Society of Jesus, and Pope Francis, also a Jesuit, are seen together before celebrating Mass at the Church of the Gesu in Rome in this Jan. 3, 2014, file photo. Jesuits from around the world will meet in Rome beginning Oct. 2 to elect a new superior general. Father Nicolas, who turned 80 in April, plans to resign after leading the order since 2008. (Credit: CNS photo/Paul Haring.)

The Society of Jesus, better known in Catholic parlance as "the Jesuits," are currently holding their 36th General Congregation in Rome to elect a new leader and to plot their course for the future. Here's what you need to know about the Jesuits, and why they matter.


ROME- Beginning October 2 and running until needed, the Society of Jesus is holding its 36th General Congregation. That means that for the foreseeable future, 215 delegates of the leading men’s religious order of the Catholic Church are gathered in Rome not only to appoint a new leader, but also to determine the path the Jesuits will take in the near future.

Since there are 16,740 Jesuits scattered across the four corners of the earth, including about 12,000 priests, 1,300 brothers, 2,700 scholastics, and 753 novices, here’s a primer as to what the General Congregation means and why it matters.

LEONARD CHITI: AS JESUITS WE SHOULD BE REFOCUSSING ON SOCIAL JUSTICE

11 October 2016 | by Elena Curti

Elena Curti speaks to the director of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Zambia for an African view



The memory of a past Jesuit leader, Pedro Arrupe S.J. (1907-1991) looms large for members of the order who are now deciding who should lead them next

This is especially true for an African delegate, Fr Leonard Chiti S.J. who is engaged in work inspired by Arrupe’s commitment to “the preferential option for the poor.”

Chiti is director of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Lusaka, Zambia. The centre, says Chiti, has a direct link to Arrupe who presided at the 32nd General Congregation (GC32) that established the “service of faith and the promotion of justice” as the overriding characteristic of all Jesuit works.

He says: “After 28 years we have become a renowned and well respected faith based organisation and we have been quite useful in terms of providing checks and balances where the government is concerned. We have been instrumental in popularising Catholic social teaching which is the bedrock of our work and whenever we make public comments they are listened to by government.”

We meet at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome where delegates at the 36th General Congregation are enjoying a short break before beginning the process of electing a new Superior General. The election is due to take place on Friday. After that, a number of weeks will be spent on determining the Society of Jesus’ priorities for the future.

Chiti is among the radical voices at GC36 who want to renew the Society of Jesus’ commitment to social justice. He is well known in Zambia as a social commentator and political activist and has a column in a local newspaper. He defends the role as entirely compatible with his ministry and shrugs off criticism from some Catholics in Zambia who disapprove of priests being involved in politics.

He is the eldest of nine children born to a Catholic family in Zambia’s copper mining region. He first discerned his vocation to the priesthood as a teenager though at that stage the Church was unwilling to accept him. He says this was because, as the eldest son, he was expected to take responsibility for his family in the event of his father’s death. He was introduced to the Jesuits on a retreat prior to going to university and was immediately drawn to the order. The link continued via a Jesuit chaplain and he joined the Jesuits after graduation. He has a Master’s degree in development studies from SOAS (The School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and theology from the Arrupe College in Harare, Zimbabwe.

There are 110 Jesuits in his province of Zambia and Malawi, mostly working in education. He says they want GC36 to strengthen what the Jesuits call the “social apostolate”.

The need, he says, is particularly urgent in Zambia: “We have been let down by our government leaders who really don’t care much about the poor even though they make nice-sounding lofty pronouncements. But I also believe that within the Church we have not done enough to equip ordinary Christians to call their leaders to account. The majority of Zambians are classified as poor, not because the country is poor but because the way the economy is run.”

And then there is the Francis-effect – “the man next door” says Chiti gesturing with a smile in the direction of St Peter’s Square. Delegates are looking to the first Jesuit Pope for inspiration when he addresses GC36 sometime after the election of the new Superior General. Francis was a delegate at GC32 and GC33.

“We are thinking how can we appropriate Pope Francis’ style of leadership within our own Society of Jesus,” says Chiti singling out Pope Francis’ encyclical on ecology, Laudato Si’. “The negative effects of climate change affect the poor the most. The Pope’s message is timely and very pertinent,” he adds.

Chiti is the sole Jesuit working with 22 lay staff at the centre for theological reflection. Greater collaboration between the Jesuits and the laity is another area he wants to see advanced at GC36. While in Rome, especially, he has been thinking about St Ignatius of Loyola and his companions, who established the Society of Jesus there in 1540.

“Every time I move between the Jesuit Curia and where I’m staying, I think about the first Jesuits. They were small group of people who worked here in Rome and who committed themselves without reservation. They didn’t worry about their comfort or material situation and were effective in their ministries. Can we imitate the first Jesuits in attending to the challenges we are facing today with the same effectiveness?”

It is a question the 36th General Congregation will consider in earnest in the coming weeks as they look at calls for the renewal of Jesuit ministry.

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Jesuits Begin Election Process, Plan to Elect Superior General by Friday

DISPATCHESGerard O'Connell | Oct 10 2016 - 12:01pm 

Father Adolfo Nicolas, the outgoing Jesuit superior, hands over the meeting to Jesuit Father Jim Grummer during an Oct. 3 gathering in Rome to elect a new superior general. (CNS photo/Don Doll, S.J.)


The 36th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus began this Monday morning, Oct. 10, the immediate preparation for the election of the order’s next Superior General, which will take place on Friday, Oct.14.

The congregation is being held at the Jesuit Curia, a stone’s throw from the Vatican. This morning the 212 delegates who will vote in the election began the official four days of “murmurationes” (“murmurings”) that end on Oct. 14, during which they will seek to identify the most suitable priest to be the next leader of the largest religious order in the Catholic church.

RELATED: Why Jesuit Elections are Different

Since the 212 delegates, plus 3 who do not have a vote, come from 62 countries and all five continents, many do not know each other. The electors come from the different Jesuit conferences worldwide: 23 from Asia Pacific, 58 from Europe, 46 from South Asia, 33 from Canada-USA, 21 from Africa and 34 from Latin America. The average age is 56, the median age 55. The oldest participant, Fr. Nicolàs, is 80; the youngest, Dany Younés, S.J., from the Near East, is 42. Almost all electors are priests, but there are also 6 brother electors


To help overcome the difficulty of not knowing each other, the organizers of GC 36 divided the delegates into some 20 small groups over the past week. In these groups, they discussed a confidential report on “The State of the Society” that will not be made public, which has been carefully prepared beforehand for the congregation with input from provinces around the world. Delegates shared their views on this report in the small groups.

Significantly, however, to enable participants to get to know each other even better, delegates had to move from one group to another and then to another throughout the week. So by the time they began the four days of “murmurings” this morning, they had gained already a better knowledge of each other.

RELATED: What Happens at a General Congregation? Memories of GC 35

There are 3 main languages at CG36: English, Spanish and French, though many participants also know Italian.

Father Adolfo Nicolàs, who has led the order since 2008, presented his resignation to the General Congregation last Monday, Oct 3, because as the supreme organ of government of the Society of Jesus, it alone can elect a Superior General or accept his resignation. He had already communicated his wish to resign to Jesuit provincials in March 2014, after first informing Pope Francis. When he finished speaking last Monday, he left the hall where the assembly is being held. Then some delegates as well as the four consultors who had worked with him in these years spoke, and after that the GC voted to accept his resignation, thereby opening the door to this week’s election.

Before resigning, however, Fr. Nicolàs appointed a Vicar General to lead the GC and the Society until the new Superior General is elected. He chose the American Jesuit, Father James Grummer.

On Friday Oct, 7, the GC delegates elected by secret ballot a secretary and two assistants (under-secretaries). They are the three major officials of the GC and their main task is to prepare every day the Acts of the Congregation, and all the official documents that will be used by members in the hall.

They elected as secretary Father Luis Orlando Torres, a Jesuit from Puerto Rico and a member of the USA Central and Southern Province (UCS). At present, he is the rector of the Jesuit Community of Collegio Internationale del Gesù in Rome.

They also elected as first Assistant Secretary, Father Agnelo Macarenhas from Goa Province, India. He is also the Under-Secretary of the Society at the General Curia in Rome. And as second Assistant Secretary, Father Francisco Javier (Patxi) Alvarez from the Spanish Province. He works in the General Curia as Secretary for Social Justice and Ecology.

These three, together with the Vicar General, will be the main officers of the GC for the election of the Superior General.

This Friday, Oct. 14, the congregation will elect 31st Superior General of the Society of Jesus with a 50 percent +1 vote (107 votes). Many observers in Rome think that like the first Jesuit pope, the new head of the order could also come from the global south.

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Jesuits begin process to choose new superior

by Catholic News Service

posted Tuesday, 4 Oct 2016

Jesuits pray during the opening session of a meeting in Rome (CNS)


The order's voting delegates and Jesuits living in Rome celebrated the Mass at Rome's Church of the Gesu on Sunday

Jesuits gathered in Rome to elect a new superior general were invited to draw on “the audacity of the improbable” during a Mass to open their general congregation.

The order’s voting delegates, the outgoing Jesuit superior, Fr Adolfo Nicolas, and Jesuits living in Rome celebrated the Mass at Rome’s Church of the Gesu on October 2, before the tomb of their founder, St Ignatius of Loyola.

The principal celebrant at the Mass was Fr Bruno Cadore, superior general of the Dominicans. He said in his homily that the Society of Jesus is called “to dare the audacity of the ‘improbable'” along with the “evangelical willingness to do it with the humility” of knowing everything depends on God.

In the day’s Gospel reading, the apostles’ request to Jesus — “Lord, increase our faith” — was an apt and “beautiful prayer” for opening the general congregation, the Dominican priest said.

Jesus teaches faith is necessary, even if it is “as modest in appearance as a mustard seed,” he said. Disciples must remember they remain “unworthy servants” while they dare to aim for the incredible and seemingly impossible — such as rebuilding and renewing a broken world.

The audacity of evangelisation is about pointing people to the one who “has done the improbable when he destroyed death and made life and immortality shine through the Gospel.”

Jesus still invites everyone to make themselves servants of a table — “a table of sinners, a table of welcome for all to which are invited the blind and the lame, Pharisees and publicans, adulterers and good people,” he said.

He also urged the Jesuits to find the strength and creativity of fidelity to the Holy Spirit “as he leads us to encounter and to listen to the other.”

The current superior, Fr Adolfo Nicolas, formally presented his resignation October 3 and named US Father James Grummer, provincial of the Wisconsin Province, to be vicar general of the Jesuits for the period up until a new superior general is elected, probably around October 10.

Fr Nicolas announced in 2014 that he would tender his resignation this year after more than eight years in office. He turned 80 in April.

Like the Pope, the superior general of the Jesuits is elected for life, although the Jesuit constitutions include provisions for the superior general to resign. In 2008, Fr Nicolas succeeded Fr Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, who resigned at age 79.

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Local priest to help select new Jesuit leader

DAVID SINGLETON, STAFF WRITER / Published: August 24, 2016



KELLER

When Jesuits from around the world convene in Rome in October to elect a new leader, the rector of the Scranton Jesuit community will be among them.

The Rev. Herbert B. Keller, S.J., said Tuesday he is honored and excited to be one of approximately 215 delegates to the order’s 36th General Congregation, which will choose a successor to retiring Father Adolfo Nicolas, S.J., current superior general of the Society of Jesus.

The next superior general will be just the 31st to lead the society in the 476 years since its founding.

“When you look at the history of this, there have only been 35 congregations throughout the almost 500 years the Society of Jesus has been in existence,” said Father Keller, 65, immediate past president of Scranton Preparatory School. “So to be part of that, to be part of selecting a new father general, is pretty humbling.”

The Rev. Keller and the Rev. David Collins, S.J., a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., were elected during secret balloting by the 284 Jesuits within the Maryland Province to represent them at the congregation after the Rev. Nicolas announced his intention to resign in late 2014. The province extends through nine states from Pennsylvania to Georgia.

They will be among 33 Jesuits from North America in attendance when the congregation opens Oct. 2 at the Jesuit Curia, the society’s world headquarters in Rome, just steps from the Vatican.

The Rev. Keller said the election of a Jesuit superior general is “unlike any electoral process that we would think of here in our country.”

“There are no nominated candidates. There is no campaigning, no lobbying. No one can aspire to the position, nor can one try to convince others to vote for someone else,” he said.

Instead, at the outset of the election phase, delegates spend four days engaged in what goes by the Latin word “murmuratio,” or murmuring. As the name implies, a “kind of quiet talking takes place,” with delegates interacting one-on-one to consider their relative strengths and to ask about others who may have the qualities to be superior general, the Rev. Keller said.

After a couple of days of conversation, a few names usually start to emerge, “and then you have an opportunity to speak with those people, to ask them your own questions,” he said.

Perhaps surprisingly, most superiors general in modern times have been elected on the first or second ballots, he said.

“It is a unique process and one that when you look at it you don’t understand how that would work, but you have to believe that God is part of the process,” the Rev. Keller said.

Once the new superior general is in place, the congregation will shift to its second phase, known as ad negotium, during which the delegates will focus on matters of mission, governance and the state of the society. All told, the congregation is expected to last six to eight weeks.

The Rev. Keller said this general congregation, while a rare occurrence in its own right, will be historic in another respect: It is the first congregation to be convened under a Jesuit pope. As a Jesuit, Pope Francis served as a delegate to two previous congregations.

It is customary for the pope to address the congregation — another reason the Rev. Keller is looking forward to the experience.

“In talking to Jesuits who have gone before to these congregations, they all refer to it as perhaps the highlight of their Jesuit lives, just being there,” he said.

Contact the writer: dsingleton@timesshamrock.com


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