Search Results for: Vier

Before the delegates to the 31st General Congregation set out “for the four corners of the world,” Pope Paul VI welcomed the Jesuits to the Sistine Chapel. His remarks urge the delegates “to renew in [their] hearts in an almost palpable and solemn way the sense of the apostolic mandate that characterizes and strengthens your […]

In July 1940, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the foundation of the Society of Jesus, Pope Pius XII issued the following apostolic letter to Wlodimir (Włodzimierz) Ledóchowski. Pius notes to the superior general how the Catholic Church “is deeply indebted to your religious society for its glorious record of service.” The letter chronicles some

As the rector at Leuven, Adrian Adriaenssens frequently consulted Ignatius on a variety of questions. In this letter, Ignatius addresses Adriaenssens’s problem of how to provide the proper food for his scholastics who are of different nationalities and physical constitutions. While Ignatius recommends having all get used to the ordinary local diet, he is clear

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

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

Subsequent to their initial deliberations during Lent in 1539, the eleven men determined their religious order would include a vow of obedience. They offered their shared intentions to enter that organization by signing the following vow of obedience, if, the vow notes, the group “will be confirmed by the pope.” Papal approval for the Society

The Society of Jesus—much like “all well-organized communities or congregations”—appoints a person “whose proper duty,” according to the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, “is to attend to the universal good.” For the Jesuits in particular, the superior general’s “duty is the good government, preservation, and growth of the whole body of the Society.” (Rather