No doubt readers have heard by this time of the extraordinary news that the Jesuit cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentino, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was elected on Wednesday as the 265th successor of St. Peter.
The news is extraordinary because it is rare for a Jesuit even to be a bishop. In fact, as part of their formal, final incorporation into the Society of Jesus, Jesuits vow not to seek or accept ecclesiastical dignities. The founder of the Jesuits, St. Ignatius Loyola, observed that many of the ills that beset the Church of his time could be traced to the unfettered ambition of the clergy. He wanted holy priests less worried about promotion and more worried about the care of souls. This in part accounts for the pope's humility that the world has witnessed in these first days of his pontificate, I believe.
How else might Pope Francis' Jesuit background affect his petrine ministry? These words from his predecessor Benedict XVI might give some clue. They were delivered to the last General Congregation of Jesuits that took place in early 2008.
If you are a visitor to this blog and want to know more about the work of the Jesuits in Dodoma, Tanzania, please feel free contact me: martin.t.connell(at)gmail.com....Nowadays the new peoples who do not know the Lord or know him badly, so that they do not recognize him as the Saviour, are far away not so much from the geographical point of view as from the cultural one. The obstacles challenging the evangelisers are not so much the seas or the long distances as the frontiers that, due to a mistaken or superficial vision of God and of man, are raised between faith and human knowledge, faith and modern science, faith and the fight for justice.This is why the Church is in urgent need of people of solid and deep faith, of a serious culture and a genuine human and social sensitivity, of religious priests who devote their lives to stand on those frontiers in order to witness and help to understand that there is in fact a profound harmony between faith and reason, between evangelical spirit, thirst for justice and action for peace. Only thus will it be possible to make the face of the Lord known to so many for whom it remains hidden or unrecognisable. This must therefore be the preferential task of the Society of Jesus. Faithful to its best tradition, it must continue to form its members with great care in science and virtue, not satisfied with mediocrity, because the task of facing and entering into a dialogue with very diverse social and cultural contexts and the different mentalities of today’s world is one of the most difficult and demanding. This search of quality and human solidity, spiritual and cultural, must also characterize all the many activities of formation and education of the Jesuits, as it meets the most diverse kinds of persons wherever they are.
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