Search Results for: de Blic

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 […]

Pope Paul VI addressed the delegates to the 32nd General Congregation on December 3, 1974, noting similar “joy and trepidation” to when the last congregation began nearly a decade before. Looking to the assembled Jesuits, the pontiff declares, “there is in you and there is in us the sense of a moment of destiny for

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

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

Mutio Vitelleschi, born to a noble family in Rome in 1563, entered the Society of the Jesus only after securing permission from Pope Gregory XIII. The Jesuits elected Vitelleschi their sixth superior general in 1615. His generalate saw worldwide expansion in missions and in membership to some 15,000 men but also an increase in the

Francis Borgia, in this letter to the Jesuits in Aquitania, in the southwest of France, provides advice on how best to preserve the spirit of the Society of Jesus. The order’s “rapid growth” reminded Borgia of how “the little grain of mustard,” once “fixing its roots” and “sending forth its branch and steam,” could become

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

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

Ignatius cared deeply for the apostolic work of reforming the houses of members of religious orders. During Ignatius’s lifetime, Jesuits carried out this work in places as far apart as Sicily, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Cardinal Marcello Cervini (later Pope Marcellus II) charged Ponce Cogordan with the reform of a monastery of Benedictine nuns

Robert Claysson, a native of Bruges, had sent a report to Rome in a rather bombastic style, and Ignatius here reproves him for having done so. His comment that Claysson’s letter could not be sent anywhere else without heavy editing refers to the fact that the reports of Jesuit activities regularly sent to Rome were often