From: b sabha <[email protected]>
Hi Please find attached a piece of mine which appeared in the Shillong times yesterday, 2nd October 2016. You may find it useful. With love Walter Dr Walter Fernandes Senior Fellow North Eastern Social Research Centre Jagriti 2nd floor GMCH Road, Christian Basti Guwahati 781005 Assam, India Mobile: (0) 8761920176 Email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Website: www.nesrc.org<http://www.nesrc.org> The Jesuit Parliament Walter Fernandes On Sunday 2nd October, 226 Jesuits elected by 80 provinces across five continents gathered in Rome to begin their 36th General Congregation, what other religious call their general chapter. Forty six of them are from the 18 administrative units of India and two of Sri Lanka and Nepal. They include Fr. Arul Soosai, head of the Jesuits in the Seven Sisters. This General Congregation that can be called their Parliament is the 36th since they were founded by Ignatius of Loyola on 27th September 1540. It is expected to last about six weeks. The delegates will give a new direction to the work of the Society of Jesus (the official name of the Jesuits) in order to help them to face the challenges of the contemporary world. They will also elect a successor to the superior general Fr Adolfo Nicolas who has offered to resign. Till the 1960s the Jesuit General was for life. Now he may offer his resignation in case of being disabled by ailment or age but his resignation becomes effective when the delegates vote for it. The delegates represent the world’s 16,000 Jesuits, down from 36,000 in the 1960s. Today a majority of them are in Asia, Africa and Latin America unlike five decades ago when Europe and North America formed the majority. India has around 4,000 or 25 per cent of them. As in the rest of the Church in the Jesuit order too, the average age in Europe and North America is over 60 years while in Asia and Africa it is in the 40s. It means that the new direction of the Society has to come from these two continents. Till the 1960s the West gave this direction. In the 1970s Latin America began to show the way through declarations such as “preferential option for the poor” in the 32nd General Congregation of 1975. From the 1980s South Asia has been contributing much to new thinking. The demographic change itself gives this mandate to Asia particularly to South Asia which accounts for a big proportion of relatively young Jesuits. The first Jesuit, Francis Xavier, reached India in 1542 within two years after they were founded. Ever since then Jesuits have had ups and downs in the country. The Jesuit Archbishop Menezes was a major actor in the events that led to the split in the St Thomas Church of Kerala. On the positive side they built up the Church of the fishing community on the Coromandel Coast of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Xavier himself founded the Church of the fishing people whom the Portuguese had baptised and abandoned with no catechesis. Xavier catechised them in his broken Tamil and organised their Church in such a way that it gave a new identity to this exploited community. Even the otherwise anti-Catholic Church historian Stephen Miller recognises that the identity was so strong that they nearly revolted against the Dutch who after conquering their region tried to impose Protestantism on them. The revolt forced the Dutch to abandon this effort. That was Xavier’s way of responding to the mandate of Ignatius of Loyola to all the Jesuits to be available for the mission where they are needed the most. They have continued this response in various forms in India and in the rest of the world. In India they were pioneers in giving an Indian form to Christianity through the efforts of the De Nobili mission in the South in the seventeenth century. In China the team led by Matteo Ricci made this effort. In Latin America Jesuits started the “Reductions of Paraguay” to protect the indigenous peoples from the Spanish rulers who enslaved and exploited them. These efforts also earned them enemies among the powerful. Under pressure from the kings of Europe the pope suppressed the Society of Jesus in 1773. It was restored in 1814. Also after their restoration Jesuits have continued their pioneering efforts as well as mistakes. In India they run 50 colleges (2 of them in the Northeast) and hundreds of high schools, many research centres, retreat houses and social action units. They are active among the refugees and indigenous peoples. Intellectual work is one of their strong points. Fr Jerome D’Souza was a member of the Constituent Assembly. In the 1950s the Government of India appointed Fr Santapau as the Director General of the Botanical Survey of India. Among those who have continued his work and Fr Cecil Saldanha with whom are identified the flora of Karnataka. The open school system owes its origin to a Jesuit Fr Thomas Kunnunkal. The research component too is strong. Around 40 craters on the moon are named after Jesuits who discovered them, so are rivers and mountains in the USA, some parts of Africa and elsewhere. They contributed some of the best theologians within years of their foundation, to the Council of Trent and to the counter-reformation. Karl Rahner was the best known theologian during the second Vatican Council. They have also paid the price for their commitment to the poor. Among its examples are the six Jesuits killed by the army of San Salvador in Central America in 1989 for their work with the indigenous peoples. Fr A. T Thomas was killed in Bihar in 1995 for his work among the dalits. The General Congregation has to reflect on all this work in the context of the refugee crisis caused by western invasion of Iraq, Syria and Libya in order to control their petroleum. They have to discuss the environmental crisis and climate change, growing poverty amid the consumerism of globalization and other issues. The new superior general will have to face these challenges when he takes over from the 80 year old Adolfo Nicolas who was elected to this post in January 2008. Eight years is not a long run for a Jesuit Superior General but Fr Nicolás is leaving a lasting imprint on Jesuits and others in ways similar to his fellow Jesuit Pope Francis who came to Rome five years after him. That both of them have kept asking Jesuits to go close to the people who need them is not surprising because they share the Ignatian spirituality of the spiritual exercises that asks them to be available where they are needed the most. Fr Nicolas, Spaniard by origin, opted for Japan while still a student preparing to be a priest. At first he served poor immigrants in a parish in Tokyo and was later appointed head of the Jesuits of Japan. In the 1980s he became director of the East Asian Pastoral Institute in Manila. He was head of the Jesuits in East Asia and the Pacific till his election as superior general. In all the capacities he has kept asking Jesuits whether they are free and available to go where they are needed and has challenged them to “recover a sense of being Jesuits first” and be available for the universal mission of the Church. He hands this legacy over to the person who will take his place. The author is Senior Fellow at North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati
