Search Results for: Juan

The Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) took place in Puebla, outside of Mexico City, in 1979. Among the participants was Pedro Arrupe, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Towards the end of the conference Arrupe answered questions from the previous, a transcript of exchanges appearing below. Arrupe begins with some introductory remarks […]

Valentín Marín, a young Spanish Jesuit working in Sicily, was known as an excellent preacher despite having a disagreeable voice. His superior greatly praised him for his learning and his holiness. But Marín was constantly beset by scruples. Ignatius, who took a personal interest in the young man’s troubles, had earlier instructed his provincial and

With this letter written by Juan Alfonso de Polanco, Ignatius orders the Society’s rectors to ensure that the local languages were used throughout all the Jesuit houses. Ignatius had ordered this previously and repeated it at the beginning of the year. This policy sought to enable the Jesuits not only to speak to those whom

Emerio de Bonis was a twenty-five-year-old scholastic strongly troubled by temptations against chastity. He had been in the Society for five years and felt overly uncertain about himself. He revealed his state of soul to Ignatius. De Bonis received the following reply from Ignatius, written on his behalf by Juan Alfonso de Polanco. Ignatius calls

Jerónimo Doménech, the provincial of Sicily, had complained both in writing to Ignatius and by word of mouth to others about the lack of manpower he had to carry on the works for which he was responsible. Ignatius’s reply to Doménech serves as a strikingly realistic account of the penury in quantity and qualifications of

Along with Francis Xavier, Gaspar Berze (or Barzaeus) was one of the great Jesuit missionaries of the sixteenth century. Before entering the Society, the Dutch Berze had served in the army of Emperor Charles V, lived as a hermit at Montserrat, and worked in the royal treasury of Portugal. With the following letter, Ignatius has

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

Nicholas Floris (Goudanus) was a zealous apostolic Jesuit from Gouda in the Low Countries. To Rome, Floris lamented his spiritual dryness, specifically how he lacked the gift of tears. Juan Alfonso de Polanco, writing on behalf of Ignatius, relays to Floris the superior general’s assurance that sensible consolations are not essential to Christian holiness. “Keep

Hannibal Coudret was one of the early Jesuits sent to the college at Messina, the first to be founded explicitly and primarily for the education of lay students by members of the Society of Jesus. In many ways, it became a model for later Jesuit schools. Some of the humanistic-classical texts adopted for study in