Search Results for: Lete

The following are notes, rather incomplete yet intimate ones, written by Pedro Arrupe before his stroke in August 1981. The Jesuits’ Superior General describes celebrating Mass, alone, in his private chapel reserved at the Curia in Rome. He provides glimpses of his passionate intimacy with the Eucharist and of his burdens of his office: “the […]

In December 1551, Ignatius had his secretary Juan Alfonso de Polanco write to Antonio Araoz, the provincial of Spain, about the Society’s rapidly developing educational apostolate. What resulted was a concentrated epitome of the early Society’s thinking about this enterprise. Polanco swiftly covers issues of “method” (founding, administration, faculty, structure, content), and “advantages,” both for

In the 1740s, Feodosii Smorzhevskii, a Russian hieromonk in Beijing, reported to his superiors on the work of Jesuit missionaries in China. Both the Russian Orthodox and Catholic missionaries attempted to navigate the labyrinthine world of the Qing imperial court. In the selection below, the Russian hieromonk reveals—in vivid detail—the precarious position of Christians in

The delegates at the Second General Congregation of the Society of Jesus gathered in the summer of 1565, in part, to elect a success to Diego Laínez as the Jesuits’ superior general. They chose Francis Borgia, a former duke of Gandía. Borgia became the third superior general, “smitten by the sword of responsibility.” Borgia delivered

Five months after Ignatius’s death on July 31, 1556, Jerómino Nadal gave two talks to Jesuit scholastics in the Collegio Romano. The talks came at the request of Diego Laínez, who served as the vicar general of the Society of Jesus following the death of Ignatius. Nadal explains, in the following excerpts, to the men

The issue of priestly vocations within the Society of Jesus, according to the following letter sent to all the Jesuit major superiors, is a troubling matter “much too serious to ignore or set aside.” Arrupe sent his letter on July 11, 1973, a time when worldwide membership in the Society of Jesus had dropped from

In the following letter sent to every Jesuit in the world on November 1, 1976, Pedro Arrupe writes about “our most important concern at present” in the Society of Jesus, namely: “How can we securely strengthen our spiritual life and our apostolate, welding them into a perfectly integrated whole so that what we do really

The following address—delivered by Pedro Arrupe to the English scholastics at Heythrop College in January 1974—serves as a challenge for “the young men of the Society” to embrace their vocation with a total commitment. “Jesuit Vocation,” Arrupe states, “is essentially a call to commit ourselves to Christ and His work.” He implores the men: “Please

Pedro Arrupe delivered the following remarks at a meeting of all the brothers in Jesuit houses in Rome. His topic is “the problem of the Brothers,” a topic also addressed previously by the Jesuits’ 31st and 32nd general congregations. The problem that Arrupe sees is how to “understand a little more deeply the value of

Superior General of the Society of Jesus Pedro Arrupe issued the following letter to every Jesuit in the world in October 1977. Arrupe’s topic is apostolic availability, an issue at “the heart of our identity, the mark that should characterize us as followers of Jesus, namely “‘to be available.’” He provides questions, based on decrees