The Jesuits

My dears, good morning. I would like to talk to you a bit about the Jesuits. But such is an extremely extensive topic, in a way that I might need to make many posts to merely start covering it properly. But one must start somewhere.

As a South American, I must say that the Jesuits have been specially important within our history. Look at men such as priest Saint José de Anchieta, as a magnificent example. A Jesuit who had herculean role in Brazilian history, with the catechization of the natives, the founding of cities - including both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, the arbitering of relations between Natives and Portuguese...

Saint José de Anchieta, writing his famed poem to the Virgin on the beach sands

Or see our neighbours, Paraguay, whose very history is intertwined with that of the Guarany Jesuitic missions.

The Jesuits have given us extraordinary missionaries, scientists, teachers, intellectuals, writers...

We can also think about St. Francis Xavier, great missionary to India, Indonesia, Japan... Or Jean de Brébeuf, who made such an extraordinary progress with the Huron-Wyandot of Canada...

Father Jacques Marquette preaching by the Mississippi

Or remember that, by the XVIIth or XVIIIth centuries, a great amount of University or court teachers (even non-Catholic courts) were supplied by the Jesuits.

Anyway, unfortunately, like everything genuinely Christian, such a massive enterprise met with the hatred of many, inspired by the devil. This is why they were so thoroughly persecuted.

Here in South America the Jesuitic missions were frequently attacked by slave-traders and pagan natives... In Canada too, Jean de Brébeuf was murdered together with the other priests and the thousands of natives they'd converted, by the bloodthirsty Iroquois...

Jesuit North American Martyrs

Jesuits travelling on the sea, to meet their territories of mission, were sometimes captured by the Calvinist Dutchmen, who were keen to slaughter them...

And in Europe itself, at the heart of European Catholic royal courts, poisoned by the liberal ideals, by the Absolutist desires, and hatred of the papacy, a great persecution arose, and the Jesuits were banned from Spain, Portugal, France, their respective colonies... Almost in the entire European continent such was done. Even the papacy, reluctantly, agreed to suppress the order for a period.

Not to talk about non-Catholic lands, such as Ukraine or Russia, where, after the reign of Catherine the Great and Paul I (who supported them) they too were banished, as the Catholics in general were heavily persecuted. There the situation of the Jesuits (during the reign of those two monarchs) was particularly interesting, for they thrived as such Russian autocrats recognized their prolific educational activities and political talents, but at the same time would face hostility from the Orthodox and many further czars, who saw them as foreign invaders and plotters, plus the ferocious resentments over the Holy Union (of Brest), in which Jesuits had an important role.

Or the persecutions of Japan, where Catholics, after a period of thriving expansion and brightness, were almost completely exterminated by the Shogunate.

St Francis Xavier, most likely in Japan

Used as scapegoats for those who hate Catholicism and enjoy revelling in all kinds of conspirationist anti-Catholic fantasies, envied and hated by their supreme intellectual, political, diplomatic, and evangelizing talents, and for their colossal work in the recuperation and expansion of the Catholic faith...

St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus; formerly a Spanish soldier of basque origins and great mundane ambitions, he converted after suffering an injury at the leg from cannon ball, and spending his recovery with the readings of Catholic books.

All those who hate Catholicism, the pope, or anything to do with us, are bound to hate the Jesuits. But on the other hand, to us, Catholics, the work of God is clear here, for all those very same reasons.

Rio de Janeiro, January 18th, 2021.