Who is a Jesuit?
Jesuit, member of the Society of Jesus (S.J.), a Roman Catholic order of religious men founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola, noted for its educational, missionary, and charitable works, once regarded by many as the principal agent of the Counter-Reformation, and later a leading force in modernizing the church.
The order grew out of the activity of Ignatius, a Spanish soldier who experienced a religious conversion during a period of convalescence from a wound received in battle. After a period of intense prayer, he composed the Spiritual Exercises, a guidebook to convert the heart and mind to a closer following of Jesus Christ. On August 15, 1534, at Paris, six young men who had met him at the University of Paris and made a retreat according to the Spiritual Exercises joined him in vows of poverty, chastity, and a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. If this last promise did not prove possible, as it did not, they vowed to accept any apostolic work requested by the pope. In 1539 Ignatius drafted the first outline of the order’s organization, which Pope Paul III approved on September 27, 1540.
The preeminent position of the Jesuits among the religious orders and their championship of the pope exposed them to hostility. By the middle of the 18th century a variety of adversaries, both lay and clerical, were seeking to destroy the order. The opposition can be traced to several reasons, primarily, perhaps, to the anticlerical and antipapal spirit of the times. In 1773 Pope Clement XIV, under pressure especially from the governments of France, Spain, and Portugal, issued a decree abolishing the order. The society’s corporate existence was maintained in Russia, where political circumstances—notably the opposition of Catherine II the Great—prevented the canonical execution of the suppression. The demand that the Jesuits take up their former work, especially in the field of education and in the missions, became so insistent that in 1814 Pope Pius VII reestablished the society.
After it was restored, the order grew to be the largest order of male religious. Work in education on all levels continued to involve more Jesuits than any other activity; however, the number of Jesuits working in the mission fields, especially in Asia and Africa, exceeded that of any other religious order. They were also involved in a broad and complex list of activities, including work in the field of communications, in social work, in ecumenism, and even in politics. In 2013 Francis I became the first Jesuit to be elected pope.