Jesuits like Pope Francis work on the margins of society Few people
were more shocked at the choice of a Jesuit as pope than the Jesuits.
There had never been a Jesuit pope before Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio
of Argentina was elected last week, and he was the only Jesuit among
the 115 cardinals who voted in the papal conclave. (The only other one,
from Indonesia, was too ill to attend.) Pope Francis, who will be
installed formally Tuesday before more than 100 heads of state and
foreign delegations, including Vice President Joe Biden and what will
undoubtedly be an adoring crowd, has already shown himself to be a
different kind of pope. He has a simpler, more personal style than his
predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, which is in part a product of his
formation as a Jesuit. So is his emphasis on the poor — and not just
that priests must help the poor but that they must also live a humble
life as a model. Speaking to journalists over the weekend, he called for
"a poor church for the poor." The Jesuit order, known formally as the
Society of Jesus, was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1540. It
emphasizes intellectual acumen, educational excellence and what it calls
contemplation in action — the dedication to working in the world on
behalf of the church and the poor, and not withdrawing from it into a
monastic or cloistered way of life. As members of the largest Catholic
religious order for men, Jesuit priests take a vow not to seek higher
office, although they can accept positions if they are offered. "For us,
it's so weird; we're used to serving the pope, not being the pope,"
Antonio Spadaro, editor of the Italian Jesuit magazine Civilta
Cattolica, said in an interview last week. Jesuits do not serve a parish
priests, but typically work as teachers and serve the poor. "The
innovation of the Jesuits was to not leave the world. You can have a
busy life and still grow in holiness, if you do it right," the Rev.
Gerard Whelan, a theologian at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian
University in Rome, told The Times. "It is spirituality oriented toward
decision-making in a busy life," he added. "We do not want an enclosed
church." Such attributes are critical to a Roman Catholic Church in
crisis. Francis is, many here say, just what the church needs at this
moment in its 2,000-year history. In outlining some of the reasons they
chose Francis, cardinals have cited his sanctity, a dedication to
Scripture and holiness and his ability to communicate and reach out as a
pastor. Their aim is to restore the church to a position of moral
authority lost in the procession of scandals and other troubles that
plagued the papacy of Benedict XVI, who resigned last month. Those
include sexual abuse of children by priests, published leaks about
Vatican mismanagement and corruption at the Vatican bank and other parts
of its administration. Francis' evident warmth and grandfatherly
affability (he has given bear hugs to some of the people greeting him at
audiences since his appointment) could go a long way in wooing back
parishioners who gave up on their church. Especially under Benedict, the
church for many seemed increasingly distant, cold, inward-looking and
Euro-centric. Benedict specifically chose to concentrate on the
evangelization of Europe, rarely spoke of the poor and tended to cite
turgid theological documents or, perhaps most infamously, Byzantine
emperors. Francis tells folksy stories from his hometown parishes. He is
the first pope from Latin America and from the entire Southern
Hemisphere, home today to most of the world's Catholics. His propensity
to wade into crowds has been sending his security detail scrambling. His
frequent departure from prepared texts is sending Vatican transcribers
scrambling. And in his long career as a Jesuit leader in Argentina, he
served during a period as a novice master, entrusted with the spiritual
teaching of young entrants, another valuable tool for the overseer of a
church that has lost priests in many parts of the world. The Jesuit
penchant for humility is one reason the choice of the Buenos Aires
native was seen as astonishing. Few Jesuits even rise to become
archbishops or cardinals. Another source of marvel stems from the many
decades of often tumultuous relations with the Vatican The late Pope
John Paul II intervened in the order over a period starting in 1981,
replacing its leader in Rome with a personal delegate. As a staunch
anti-communist, the Polish-born pontiff feared that some Jesuits,
especially in Latin America, were becoming too enamored of liberation
theology, a left-leaning interpretation of church teachings that some
critics believed veered into Marxism. The crackdown against priests in
Latin America, many of them Jesuits, would have traumatic consequences.
Priests who championed the poor found few ways to do their work that did
not threaten the status quo in that Cold War era. A small number took
up arms; others were killed or persecuted by repressive regimes. "They
were left with a terrible dilemma," Whelan said of the Jesuit clergy in
Latin America. "You had unsavory dictatorships supported by the West, a
freezing of more normal processes of social reform and a Catholic Church
habitually equated with the ruling class. What do you do in such a
polarized situation?" applanate
zizel
divaricate
nous
coulombmeter
semanteme
hereticide
aboulomania
cynomorphic
gonoph
lentiginose
stereognosis
soliloquacious
polyhidrosis
vetanda
angary
vagility
topaesthesia
congener
onymancy
osmometer
squassation
gauss
cholic
dispone
aerophane
eudiaphoresis
encraty
supernatant
claustration
aureole
trichology
chorisis
frontal
leontiasis
habanera
barcarole
sough
handfast
facula
catholicon