When in 2014 Fr General Adolfo Nicolás announced that he wished to tender his resignation as Superior General of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) on turning 80 in 2016, a number of people were surprised at the news as the role had, until recently, been served till death. Not all were perturbed, however. To be shackled by tradition has never been high on most Jesuits’ list of priorities.
On Thursday, the wheels were set in motion, as some 215 Jesuits from 62 countries gathered in Rome to begin their General Congregation (GC) which, besides electing a new superior general, will discern and decide on new structures and direction for the largest order of brothers and priests in the Catholic Church.
Why does Fr Nicolás wish to resign from a role to which he was elected for life? (His predecessor Fr Kolvenbach did the same.) His reasoning is rooted in the call of a Jesuit to be fully available and relevant, immersed in new frontiers and where the need is greatest.
In an interview published in July by the Jesuit Curia in Rome, Fr Nicolás explained that the congregation is free to accept or reject his resignation request. However, “we need agility and daring in facing the future”, and if the delegates insist he remain superior general, they “will have to elect a vicar to provide for the coming years in which my abilities will certainly be greatly diminished, a process that I am already beginning to feel at present”.
Times have changed and there is a new awareness in the society that we need daring, imagination and courage in facing our mission
The GC is the supreme governing body of the Society of Jesus, which only convenes to elect a new Superior General or in case of matters of great importance that the Superior General cannot or does not want to decide alone – a rule stipulated directly by the founder of the Jesuit Order, St Ignatius Loyola, who believed that meeting more frequently would be an unnecessary waste of precious time. This is only the 36th such gathering since the foundation of the Society of Jesus, which celebrated its 476th anniversary this week.
The GC itself is a curious thing. Members themselves determine the schedule for the meeting. Other than the opening Mass and initial presentation of the report on the present state of the Society, in the words of Jesuit Fr Patrick Mulemi, director of the Jesuit communications office in Rome, “there is no set date for the rest of the business,” and “there is no way of knowing when it will end!”The longest was GC8, which took 145 days in 1645, while the shortest was GC6 in 1608.
The election itself will probably take place in the second week of the GC, following four days of ‘murmurings’, itself a unique process. There is no list of candidates or nominees and lobbying is forbidden. Signs of ambition will be cause for disqualification (there is even a commission to ensure this).
Participants and delegates may speak to each other, asking about the positive and negative characteristics of any specific person, but they are not allowed to suggest anyone. These are four days of recollection, discernment and prayer. St Ignatius explained very clearly what characteristics should be looked for in the society’s leader, however, knowing that they may be overambitious, he conceded that ultimately, the most essential qualities should be those of sound character, a deep love for the society and a culture of common sense.
In order to be elected, a candidate must obtain 50 per cent + one of the votes cast, and this usually takes a few hours. In 1983, Fr Peter Hans Kolvenbach was elected on the first ballot and Fr Nicolás was elected on the second ballot in 2008. The first person to be informed of the result of the election is the Pope, since the Order has a special vow of obedience to him and is at his service; however, the election is binding and the Pope’s approval is not required.
It will be interesting to see what decisions will be taken in the days following the election of the new Jesuit Superior General. Discussions and decisions on which priorities and directions should be taken by the society worldwide will be far-reaching and based on the challenges faced by today’s world.
“There has been a demographic shift in the society to the ‘global south’ between the 35th and 36th GCs,” Fr Antonio Moreno, the Jesuit provincial of the Philippines Province, told the press during a conference in Rome announcing the beginning of the GC last Tuesday.
He attributed this shift to the fact that the family and the sense of community is still strong in Asia and Africa, whereas this is less true in the West, where secularisation has had a major impact. This followed the revelation by Fr Federico Lombardi of the “strong decrease” in the number of Jesuits over the past 50 years, especially in Europe and North America. On the other hand, he said, there has been a great increase in the number of Jesuits in Asia and Africa, with some 63 per cent of novices and 65 per cent of scholastics today coming from these continents.
How might this Congregation be different from previous ones?
“Times have changed,” said Fr Nicolás, “and there is a new awareness in the society that we need daring, imagination and courage in facing our mission as part of the bigger mission of God vis-à-vis our world.”
One thing is for sure, the Jesuits will “row into the deep” as requested by perhaps the best known Jesuit of our times, Pope Francis, the first Jesuit Pope in history, who is all too familiar with the Jesuit charism of being at the service of the Church, immersed in the world at its most challenging and demanding, being with the poor at all levels and promoting education and social justice in every corner of the globe.
Alison Vella is the communications officer of the Malta Jesuit Province.