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In 1965, the Second Vatican Council issued Perfectae caritatis, a proclamation that mandated religious orders seek renewal through reflection and honoring “their founders’ spirit and special aims.” In 2008, the delegates at the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, in part, responded to that mandate with their second decree, “A Fire that Kindles […]

One month after they elected Alfonso Nicolás to succeed Peter-Hans Kolvenbach as the Jesuits’ superior general, the delegates of the 35th General Congregation gathered, at the pontiff’s invitation, in the Vatican’s Sala Clementina. There, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the men with words of gratitude. He states, “I very much hope, therefore, that the entire Society

Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the superior general of the Society of Jesus, delivered the following remarks, over three days, to open the Jesuits’ 34th General Congregation. Kolvenbach reminds the delegates that their gathering had its “source and origins in the spiritual experience of Ignatius and his first companions,” that, in the words of Ignatius, theirs was “a

 The 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus opened on January 5, 1995, with a Mass at the Church of the Holy Spirit, located across from the Jesuits’ Curia in Rome. At noon that same day, the delegates proceeded to the Vatican’s Sala Clementina for an audience with Pope John Paul II. To the

General Congregation 32 signified a major transition in how the Jesuits understood the connection between their mission and the service of faith and promotion of social justice. That connection was articulated in the congregation’s fourth decree, “Our Mission Today.” “In short,” as the decree’s introduction observes, “our mission today is to preach Jesus Christ and

At the time of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), Jesuits, as with other Catholics, engaged in new labors and in new contexts. The Council’s decree Perfectae Caritatis encouraged those in a religious order to first know their institute’s “original spirit” so that they might make “the best adjustments…in accordance with the needs of our new

On July 31, 1973, Pedro Arrupe, the superior general of the Society of Jesus, spoke to the 10th International Congress of Jesuit Alumni of Europe gathered in Valencia, Spain. Because of the “new awareness in the Church,” Arrupe concedes in these remarks that a graduate from Jesuit schools and colleges had not been properly educated to

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

A Neapolitan woman had started a home for six or seven abandoned girls, whom she brought to the Jesuit church for the sacraments. She rented a house next door to the Jesuits, where the girls’ windows looked onto the men’s rooms. When she refused to move, the Jesuit superior, Alfonso Salmerón, threatened to deny the

In 1552, the Portuguese province experienced a breakdown of obedience in its members, arising, in part, because the previous provincial (Simão Rodrigues) was unable or unwilling to take the necessary corrective measures. To solve the problem of disobedience, Ignatius wrote the following letter asking that Diego Miró, the new provincial, dismiss from the Society those