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Six months after the conclusion of the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus in 1975, Pedro Arrupe hosted representatives from provinces and other Jesuit organizations to discuss the issue of collaboration. The meeting was particularly sparked by the congregation’s Decree 4, “Our Mission Today.” Below appears the text of Arrupe’s remarks to the […]

Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus on July 21, 1773. In the preceding decades, the Jesuits had suffered expulsions from the Catholic empires of Portugal (1759), France (1764), and Spain (1767), where they had become handy scapegoats for kings or princes under civic pressure. In Portugal, for example, charges against the Society included

The delegates of the 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus argued that Catholic Church of the 21st century was to be “unmistakably…the ‘Church of the Laity.’” To praise, foster, and guide further collaboration with the laity, the Jesuits at the congregation issued the following the decree. It considers what the Society can offer

The delegates at the 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus undertook a “specific consideration of the priestly dimension of Jesuit life.” In the decree below, they conclude that, despite the continuing reverberations of the Second Vatican Council, “it remains important that Jesuits continue to have confidence in the value of the apostolic service

The following decree from the 32nd General Congregation amends the Jesuits’ policy on the permanent diaconate as articulated in a decree from the previous congregation. The decree and amendments were necessary, as historian John Padberg notes, because the Holy See had requested religious orders to “clearly determine the juridical status of their permanent deacons” (see

Postulta (or petitions) sent by Jesuits in advance of the 31st General Congregation requested that the congregation’s delegates revise the norms that previously censored some books. The delegates, in the following decree, respond to those requests by giving the superior general the authority to later “adapt the particular norms of our own law in this

The delegates of the 31st General Congregation used their seventh decree to address the matter of temporal adjuators, or brothers, within the Society of Jesus. The delegates were responding both to the declining numbers of brothers over the last several decades but also to postulata (or petitions) that requested both a clarification of the brothers’

In a letter to Arrupe during General Congregation 32, Pope Paul VI reiterates his desire that “no change can be introduced to the fourth vow” taken by the Jesuits. He continues that the Jesuits’ superior general to encourage “yet deeper reflection on your responsibilities, and on your great potentialities as well as on the dangers

The Cardinal of State, replying to Pedro Arrupe, provided the responses of Pope Paul VI to the decrees of the 32nd General Congregation. After “carefully” examining the decrees, the pontiff found some “somewhat confusing and could, because of the way they are expressed, give grounds for misinterpretation.” Therefore, Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot provides Arrupe with Paul VI’s “Particular

Seriously ill, Francesco Mancini came from Sicily to Naples. He wrote to Ignatius, saying that for his own spiritual consolation he judged it better to stay with his Jesuit brethren there than with his family. The superior in Naples, Alfonso Salmerón, had believed that Mancini could not receive the proper treatment at the city’s college