Founded in the 16th century by St. Ignatius Loyola, the religious order is known for its missionary reach, intense focus on education and devotion to the poor. Ignatius Press founder Father Joseph D.
Yet Jesuits have also found themselves at odds with the Vatican from time to time, as their teachings to find God in all things thrust them into the outside world. Some experts believe that also may have made them unlikely candidates for the papacy in the past.
Jesuits range from strictly conservative to radically liberal, but are united by lengthy spiritual exercises meditating on the life of Jesus. Yet they are also global in outlook and outward in their focus, plunging them into controversial issues as they grapple with other cultures, said Father Gerald McKevitt, professor of Jesuit studies at Santa Clara University. As Jesuits evangelized in China, for instance, they argued for allowing Chinese converts to continue the Confucian practice of venerating ancestors; the church banned the practice despite their arguments.
Such clashes underscored fears that the Society of Jesus was too independent. Despite the ban, the Jesuits survived and continued their work before the decree was fully reversed in Disagreements have surfaced from time to time since: In , Pope John Paul II appointed his own delegate to govern the Jesuit order, replacing its chosen nominee. Critics labeled him a collaborator with the Argentine military junta even though biographies show he worked carefully and clandestinely to save many lives.
None of that ended the intrigue against Bergoglio within the Jesuits, and in the early s, he was effectively exiled from Buenos Aires to an outlying city, "a time of great interior crisis," as he's put it. In classic Jesuit tradition, however, Bergoglio complied with the society's demands and sought to find God's will in it all.
Paradoxically, his virtual estrangement from the Jesuits encouraged Cardinal Antonio Quarracino of Buenos Aires to appoint Bergoglio as an assistant bishop in In , Bergoglio succeeded Quarracino as archbishop.
His rise in the hierarchy, however, only seemed to cement suspicions about him among his foes among the Jesuits. During his regular visits to Rome, Bergoglio never stayed at the Jesuit headquarters but rather at a clerical guest house with other prelates. In the conclave that elected Benedict XVI, Bergoglio was the runner-up, a near-miss that left many Jesuits breathing a sigh of relief.
So when Bergoglio was chosen as pope in March , one could almost hear the collective gasp in Jesuit communities around the world. Humberto Miguel Yanez, an Argentine Jesuit like Francis, who heads the moral theology department at the Gregorian University in Rome, a Jesuit school sometimes called "the pope's Harvard. And if he had not become a bishop, he would not have become a cardinal and, ultimately, pope, since the College of Cardinals by tradition chooses each successor to St.
Peter from among their own ranks. Now, of course, all is forgiven, and then some. Francis is a "brother among brothers," as the current head of the order, Jesuit Fr.
Adolfo Nicolas, put it, and Francis has made a point of highlighting the importance of the Jesuits and the Ignatian way for the church. Francis also knows how much the Jesuits are still resented by some corners in the church and especially in the Vatican, but he has not let that alter his own deeply Jesuitical style.
In December, he circumvented the usual protocols to canonize one of Ignatius' original companions, Peter Favre, whom Francis has praised for being "in dialogue with all, even the most remote and even with his opponents. He lives simply, rejecting the traditional papal apartments to live in a small community inside a Vatican guest house.
The pope also preaches forcefully that other clerics, and especially the hierarchy, should eschew the perks and privileges of their office and instead learn to act and live like the servants of their flock he says they're called to be. Francis' pastoral style extends to his mode of governance.
One of his first actions as pope was to name a council of eight cardinals from around the world -- none of them from the dysfunctional Roman Curia -- to serve as a kitchen Cabinet, much the way Jesuit superiors operate. He has used a similar model for tackling specific tasks as well, such as overhauling the Vatican's finances. This sort of discernment -- listening to all and contemplating everything before acting -- is a cardinal virtue of the Ignatian spirituality that is at the core of Francis' being and his commitment to a "conversion" of the papacy as well as the entire church.
But that also means it's hard to say exactly what will come next. Francis is shrewd, and he has repeatedly praised the Jesuit trait of "holy cunning" -- that Christians should be "wise as serpents but innocent as doves," as Jesus put it. The pope's openness, however, also a signature of his Jesuit training and development, means that not even he is sure where the spirit will lead. I don't even have all the questions. I always think of new questions, and there are always new questions coming forward.
Send your thoughts and reactions to Letters to the Editor. Learn more here. Join now. How will this obedience work? Francis has not yet given any outline of reforms he plans for the scandal-hit Vatican, but Jesuits contacted by Reuters sketched out the guidelines they thought he would use.
It has about 18, priests and brothers. It was founded in by Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish knight who was wounded in battle and experienced a religious conversion. It became a powerful force in Catholic education, with colleges and universities around the world, and sent zealous missionaries to far-off lands to spread the Gospel. In the strict rules he set down, no Jesuit was to seek higher office or honors in the Church. Only the pope can ask them to make an exception, which they do in obedience to him, he added.
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