Word: jesuitical
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...interview Tuesday with the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire, Bertone recalled his lengthy dinner with the Jesuit-educated Fidel. "It was a very long conversation. We spoke of many things, of hunger and of poverty spread through the world, and the need of a greater solidarity among people and governments. We spoke of wars and progress." Bertone said that Castro spoke highly of Benedict. "'I like this Pope,' he told me, 'He is a good person. I have understood that immediately seeing his face, the face of an angel...
...Asian experience is an old strength of the order: St. Francis Xavier being the Jesuit's great Apostle to the East, who converted hundreds in Japan, died off the coast of China and has his body enshrined in the Indian city of Goa. Jesuits converted the last survivors of the Ming dynasty to Catholicism as they fled the Manchu invaders in the mid-17th century. But Nicolas also brings in another important strand of history: he hails from the northern city of Palencia, not too far from hometown of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the 16th century Basque soldier who founded...
...Nicolas' biography shares a striking parallel with another of his more recent predecessors. Pedro Arrupe, the charismatic and controversial Superior General from 1965 until 1983, was another Spaniard who rose up through the ranks in Japan before being chosen to lead the Jesuits. Arrupe's reign was marked by progressive challenges to the Church establishment, including clashes with both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II. Arrupe's reign, consistent with order's history of experiments with theology and philosophy, saw the rise of radical Jesuit participation in politics, from the anti-war movement...
Whether Nicolas turns out to be cut more from the Arrupe or Kolvenbach mold remains to be seen. A Jesuit source in Rome said that the new boss had ruffled Vatican feathers in 1998 with his role in a request by Asian bishops for more local authority for Church decisions. If that is an omen for the nature of his administration, the new black pope may find himself clashing with the regular Pope, who has reaffirmed that ultimate authority lies with the Vatican...
There has apparently already been some papal concern about the Jesuit's relatively liberal perspectives. In a letter last week to Kolvenbach, on the eve of the election of his successor and a month-long meeting of a congregation of Jesuit leaders, Benedict implored the order to hold firm in Catholic tradition on matters of morality and sexuality. "It could prove extremely useful that the general congregation reaffirm, in the spirit of St. Ignatius, its own total adhesion to Catholic doctrine, in particular on those neuralgic points which today are strongly attacked by secular culture," the Pope said...