Source: http://indiancurrents.org/ - (Published in Indian Currents, on 24th October 2016, Volume XXVIII, Issue 43)
“The white pope (Francis) and the black pope [i] are from Latin America," tweeted South African Cardinal Wilfred Fox Napier in reaction to the election of Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ as the General of the Society of Jesus on 14th October 2016. It was a historic moment for the Jesuits and the Church. In its 476 years of history, the Order had 30 Superior Generals - all of them came from Europe. The 212 electors on 14th October 2016 created history by electing a non-European from Venezuela, Latin America in the very first ballot after spending two weeks together in Rome.
These members of the Society of Jesus coming from 66 countries may not have known each other and yet when the election came they knew whom to vote. This is because St. Ignatius Loyola, the Founder of the Jesuit Order had developed a unique method of electing his successors popularly known as discernment. No Jesuit can contest, lobby, campaign or express desire for the post. If any person desires or campaigns for the post he is immediately disqualified and moved out of the Congregation. How then Jesuits elect their Superior General? At first they look at the mission in their provinces, then the country and the global world. There are discussions on the various challenges Society of Jesus is faced with and the kind of responses the Order needs to make to be relevant. Once the context of the mission is clear the electors go in search of a leader who could guide, inspire and lead the Jesuits in that mission. A four day of “murmurationes”, in other words private face-to-face meetings between voters, alternated with moments of prayer, helps to identify the candidates. Once delegates come to realize the strengths of individuals they pray over and cast their votes through a secret ballot.
The Method has worked
The method has worked effectively in the election of 30 Generals beginning with St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Founder of the Society who was elected in a similar fashion. This is because in spite of coming from different cultures and communities Jesuits share a common culture linked to their experience of listening to the Holy Spirit through the Spiritual Exercises. At the Congregation in fact only 16% of the electors were from Latin America and 27% from Europe. While South Asians were 21%, Asia Pacific had 11% voters. Africa had 10% voters and Canada-USA 15% and yet Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ was found the right person to lead the Society of Jesus at the present times in the very first ballot. What are his credentials? 68 year old Fr. Sosa born in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 12, 1948 holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the Catholic University Andrés Bello in Caracas, a bachelor’s degree in theology from the Gregorian University in Rome and a Doctorate in Political Science from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He was Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Venezuela from 1996 to 2004. Fr. Sosa speaks Spanish, Italian and English and understands French. Prior to his appointment as Provincial, he was in charge of the social apostolate of the Jesuits in Venezuela, which includes the Jesuit network of schools for the poor, Fe y Alegría. He was also head of the Centro Gumilla, the Jesuit-run social and action research center. Among his distinguished academic posts, he has served as a member of the founding board of the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas and rector of the Catholic University of Táchira. He has taught and researched political science in many different institutes and colleges and in 2004 was a visiting professor at the Latin-American Studies Center of Georgetown University.
Why a Person from Latin America?
With the delegates still in Rome it may be difficult to comprehend why the electors chose a person from Venezuela with a doctorate in Political Science. Normally Jesuit Generals were experts in theology or spirituality or formation. However one can see behind the elected person the reasons for his choice and understand why the choice was made. Latin America is not the center of the world but a land at the periphery. With Pope Francis in office the periphery has moved into the centre. The congregation must have thought of embarking on a mission to the outer fringes looking in a particular direction offered by the Pope as a leader for the Church. Nations, governments, powers and authorities in Europe have largely pushed the church to the fringes and moved it to the margins. Europe may offer lip-service to Christianity when it serves some political purpose, but more and more, the voice of the church is being challenged, silenced or ignored. Why? The markets simply have become more important than faith. God and the Poor do not have a place in the neo-liberal markets. Even if there is Christianity there it is lived very differently without challenging the system.
Latin America is different
Latin America is different and is at the centre of Christianity. It is home to almost half of the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. Christians make up almost 90 percent of the region. It is a challenged Christianity here. The last quarter of the 20th century, much of Latin America was gripped by civil wars. Today the more common form of brutality comes from criminal gangs linked to the drug trade. They have given the continent the world’s highest murder rate. With less than 10 percent of the world’s population, Latin America counts for a third of its 450,000 homicides each year. Entire communities are terrorized by armed bands and criminal gangs, with anyone who resists, including Christians inspired by their faith, carrying targets on their backs. Scores of journalists, bloggers, political activists, police and military personnel, and prosecutors and judges in Latin America have paid the ultimate price with their lives. The violence there is a generalized social cancer. Anyone who challenges that violence is at risk. Unlike in Europe, the Church has not been silent here.
Responses
Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, slain on March 24, 1980, while saying Mass at a small hospital chapel was one example of the many who challenged the system. His was a faith response to injustice. Before his death, Romero had emerged as the voice of El Salvador’s poor and oppressed. He was beatified on May 23, 2015, in front of a massive crowd in downtown San Salvador estimated at 750,000, making it one of the largest religious gatherings in the history of Central America. His murder was not an isolated one. El Salvador’s martyrs also include a Jesuit priest named Rutilio Grande, whose 1977 assassination helped radicalize Romero and six Jesuit priests, as well as their housekeeper and her daughter, shot to death in November 1989 at San Salvador’s University of Central America. A section of the church had reservation on the political way of witnessing to the Gospels forgetting the fact that Gospels are political. There was reluctance to accept the martyrdom of Romero. Cardinals in the Vatican schooled in the scholastic theology opined that Archbishop Romero was more political and Marxist than spiritual and Christian. However Pope Francis right from the beginning of his papacy had offered to the church Romero as a heroic witness to faith. To elect one from the region where Christianity is lived in a challenging way is to send a message that the mission of the Society of Jesus cannot be spiritualized but activized and lived in fullness. Faith and justice should include struggling against structural injustice. In the election of a new General there surely will be a re-inventing of the mission of the Jesuits for today across the world.
Theological Response
The Church of Latin America had also theologically responded very differently in its option for the poor. Catholic scholars judge the second general conference of Latin American Council of Bishops (CELAM) held at Medellin in 1968 to be a watershed. Before Medellin the church looked at its pastoral task as the dispensation of sacramental grace within the contours of a Christian society. Medellin recognized that society was pluralistic, and that in this society a transformation of traditional values was possible and necessary. Attempts were made to change the popular manifestations of the faith and devotional acts to the saints from intercessory devices to models for life in imitation of Christ. The fatalism nurtured by the traditional sacramental view was rejected. Emphasis was placed on educating people to become active collaborators with God in creating new communities of solidarity with recourse to Sacraments. Grassroots community groups with Bible study and joint action in meeting social needs especially in marginal economic areas were organized. Recognition of the dignity of the human person, and particularly of the rights of the poor and oppressed, was declared to be at the heart of the gospel message. People were made conscious of injustices and shown a direction for struggle. Pope Francis as a Bishop and Cardinal had spent most of his time with the poor in slums and impoverished areas.
Attack on Capitalism
At the next meeting in Puebla the bishops were united in their harsh judgment of capitalism for increasing the distance between rich and poor people and nations. The conference was equally critical of Marxism, for sacrificing many Christian values and creating false utopias sustained by force. The conference denounced security states, for supporting dictatorships that abuse police power to deprive human beings of their rights. The theology of liberation was formulated after 1960 by theologians and social scientists through reflection on Latin American social and political reality and attempts to transform its oppressive structures. The best-known Catholic exponents include Gustavo Gutierrez (Peru), Juan Luis Segundo (Uruguay), Segundo Galilea (Chile), José Miranda (Mexico), Hugo Assman and Leonardo Boff (Brazil), Jon Sobrino (El Salvador), and Enrique Dussel (Argentina). They affirm the necessity of moving toward a social system characterized by priority for the poor, use of the social sciences in the analysis of reality, recognition of the ideological base from which every person develops religious understanding and importance given to praxis—active and obedient discipleship, supported by theory, with the eventual goal of the transformation of society. This theology was variously interpreted with Vatican in total disagreement and finally found legitimacy with Pope Francis. The fervor with which liberation theology embraced large majority of marginalized peoples and the evangelical zeal for social transformation marked a significant renovation in Catholicism.
Choice of a Political Scientist
The choice therefore of a Political Scientist as General is intelligible. How can any faith institution understand society and state without the social tools of analysis and theory? For too long faith has come to be understood as a set of devotions and practices, rites and rituals without fully understanding its transformative power. Latin America had begun the process four decades ago by looking at the base of theology as the poor and the impoverished and the Word to pull them out from those oppressive structures. With the election of Pope Francis, a man from the periphery, the periphery has become central. The church has realized the importance of working for social change as the key dimension of faith. The Society of Jesus had contributed to that process in no small measure though experienced opposition. In his own way the present General has contributed to that process. With grassroots experience he too had smelt the sheep as Director of ‘Centro Gumilla’, a social and action research centre and as Coordinator of non-formal education. He has been political in his mission like Pope Francis unafraid to take a stand. In an interview in 2014 he had described the authoritarian regime of Chavez’s successor Nicolas Maduro as a “popular tyranny”.
Re-inventing Mission
From the person Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ has been and his commitment to faith and justice there is bound to be changes in the mission of the Society of Jesus. While formation houses may be asked to re-invent their teaching of philosophy and theology with tools of social sciences to make faith alive and contextual the mission of the Society will surely be re-invented on the lines of the inspiration offered by Latin American Church. Fr. Pedro Arrupe SJ was a prophetic General who led the Society from 1965 to 1983. Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ is likely to fall back on that legacy with Pope Francis as a mentor to lead. The Society of Jesus always had a close bond with the person of the Pope. Now with two Latin Americans leading the Church, both Jesuits, in two different places linked together in faith they are likely to make a difference in re-inventing Christianity for our times. The only unique thing about Sosa is that he would be the first Jesuit general to sport a moustache without a beard.
( Dr. Ambrose Pinto SJ is Principal of St. Aloysius Degree College, Bangalore.)
(Published on 24th October 2016, Volume XXVIII, Issue 43)#
[i] The Jesuit Superior General is known as Black Pope for the simple black robes he wears in opposition to the white robe of the Pope. The other reason may have been that the Office of the Papacy and of the Superior General of the Jesuits once elected is till death though there are two cases of resignation of the recent Generals when they reached 80 and one Pope - Pope Benedict. That is where the comparison stops. "The black pope" is a nickname given to the Father General of the Society of Jesus. It is the people of Rome who had begun speaking jokingly of the Jesuit head as a second pope imagining that the Society exercises huge influence on the Vatican which is a figment of the imagination. The Jesuits are a religious Order like any other with our own characteristics. But we have always been at the service of the Church whenever the Papacy has called us for any specific mission or work. Obedience to the Pope has been the hallmark of the Society of Jesus.
“The white pope (Francis) and the black pope [i] are from Latin America," tweeted South African Cardinal Wilfred Fox Napier in reaction to the election of Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ as the General of the Society of Jesus on 14th October 2016. It was a historic moment for the Jesuits and the Church. In its 476 years of history, the Order had 30 Superior Generals - all of them came from Europe. The 212 electors on 14th October 2016 created history by electing a non-European from Venezuela, Latin America in the very first ballot after spending two weeks together in Rome.
These members of the Society of Jesus coming from 66 countries may not have known each other and yet when the election came they knew whom to vote. This is because St. Ignatius Loyola, the Founder of the Jesuit Order had developed a unique method of electing his successors popularly known as discernment. No Jesuit can contest, lobby, campaign or express desire for the post. If any person desires or campaigns for the post he is immediately disqualified and moved out of the Congregation. How then Jesuits elect their Superior General? At first they look at the mission in their provinces, then the country and the global world. There are discussions on the various challenges Society of Jesus is faced with and the kind of responses the Order needs to make to be relevant. Once the context of the mission is clear the electors go in search of a leader who could guide, inspire and lead the Jesuits in that mission. A four day of “murmurationes”, in other words private face-to-face meetings between voters, alternated with moments of prayer, helps to identify the candidates. Once delegates come to realize the strengths of individuals they pray over and cast their votes through a secret ballot.
The Method has worked
The method has worked effectively in the election of 30 Generals beginning with St. Ignatius of Loyola, the Founder of the Society who was elected in a similar fashion. This is because in spite of coming from different cultures and communities Jesuits share a common culture linked to their experience of listening to the Holy Spirit through the Spiritual Exercises. At the Congregation in fact only 16% of the electors were from Latin America and 27% from Europe. While South Asians were 21%, Asia Pacific had 11% voters. Africa had 10% voters and Canada-USA 15% and yet Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ was found the right person to lead the Society of Jesus at the present times in the very first ballot. What are his credentials? 68 year old Fr. Sosa born in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 12, 1948 holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the Catholic University Andrés Bello in Caracas, a bachelor’s degree in theology from the Gregorian University in Rome and a Doctorate in Political Science from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He was Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Venezuela from 1996 to 2004. Fr. Sosa speaks Spanish, Italian and English and understands French. Prior to his appointment as Provincial, he was in charge of the social apostolate of the Jesuits in Venezuela, which includes the Jesuit network of schools for the poor, Fe y Alegría. He was also head of the Centro Gumilla, the Jesuit-run social and action research center. Among his distinguished academic posts, he has served as a member of the founding board of the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas and rector of the Catholic University of Táchira. He has taught and researched political science in many different institutes and colleges and in 2004 was a visiting professor at the Latin-American Studies Center of Georgetown University.
Why a Person from Latin America?
With the delegates still in Rome it may be difficult to comprehend why the electors chose a person from Venezuela with a doctorate in Political Science. Normally Jesuit Generals were experts in theology or spirituality or formation. However one can see behind the elected person the reasons for his choice and understand why the choice was made. Latin America is not the center of the world but a land at the periphery. With Pope Francis in office the periphery has moved into the centre. The congregation must have thought of embarking on a mission to the outer fringes looking in a particular direction offered by the Pope as a leader for the Church. Nations, governments, powers and authorities in Europe have largely pushed the church to the fringes and moved it to the margins. Europe may offer lip-service to Christianity when it serves some political purpose, but more and more, the voice of the church is being challenged, silenced or ignored. Why? The markets simply have become more important than faith. God and the Poor do not have a place in the neo-liberal markets. Even if there is Christianity there it is lived very differently without challenging the system.
Latin America is different
Latin America is different and is at the centre of Christianity. It is home to almost half of the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. Christians make up almost 90 percent of the region. It is a challenged Christianity here. The last quarter of the 20th century, much of Latin America was gripped by civil wars. Today the more common form of brutality comes from criminal gangs linked to the drug trade. They have given the continent the world’s highest murder rate. With less than 10 percent of the world’s population, Latin America counts for a third of its 450,000 homicides each year. Entire communities are terrorized by armed bands and criminal gangs, with anyone who resists, including Christians inspired by their faith, carrying targets on their backs. Scores of journalists, bloggers, political activists, police and military personnel, and prosecutors and judges in Latin America have paid the ultimate price with their lives. The violence there is a generalized social cancer. Anyone who challenges that violence is at risk. Unlike in Europe, the Church has not been silent here.
Responses
Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, slain on March 24, 1980, while saying Mass at a small hospital chapel was one example of the many who challenged the system. His was a faith response to injustice. Before his death, Romero had emerged as the voice of El Salvador’s poor and oppressed. He was beatified on May 23, 2015, in front of a massive crowd in downtown San Salvador estimated at 750,000, making it one of the largest religious gatherings in the history of Central America. His murder was not an isolated one. El Salvador’s martyrs also include a Jesuit priest named Rutilio Grande, whose 1977 assassination helped radicalize Romero and six Jesuit priests, as well as their housekeeper and her daughter, shot to death in November 1989 at San Salvador’s University of Central America. A section of the church had reservation on the political way of witnessing to the Gospels forgetting the fact that Gospels are political. There was reluctance to accept the martyrdom of Romero. Cardinals in the Vatican schooled in the scholastic theology opined that Archbishop Romero was more political and Marxist than spiritual and Christian. However Pope Francis right from the beginning of his papacy had offered to the church Romero as a heroic witness to faith. To elect one from the region where Christianity is lived in a challenging way is to send a message that the mission of the Society of Jesus cannot be spiritualized but activized and lived in fullness. Faith and justice should include struggling against structural injustice. In the election of a new General there surely will be a re-inventing of the mission of the Jesuits for today across the world.
Theological Response
The Church of Latin America had also theologically responded very differently in its option for the poor. Catholic scholars judge the second general conference of Latin American Council of Bishops (CELAM) held at Medellin in 1968 to be a watershed. Before Medellin the church looked at its pastoral task as the dispensation of sacramental grace within the contours of a Christian society. Medellin recognized that society was pluralistic, and that in this society a transformation of traditional values was possible and necessary. Attempts were made to change the popular manifestations of the faith and devotional acts to the saints from intercessory devices to models for life in imitation of Christ. The fatalism nurtured by the traditional sacramental view was rejected. Emphasis was placed on educating people to become active collaborators with God in creating new communities of solidarity with recourse to Sacraments. Grassroots community groups with Bible study and joint action in meeting social needs especially in marginal economic areas were organized. Recognition of the dignity of the human person, and particularly of the rights of the poor and oppressed, was declared to be at the heart of the gospel message. People were made conscious of injustices and shown a direction for struggle. Pope Francis as a Bishop and Cardinal had spent most of his time with the poor in slums and impoverished areas.
Attack on Capitalism
At the next meeting in Puebla the bishops were united in their harsh judgment of capitalism for increasing the distance between rich and poor people and nations. The conference was equally critical of Marxism, for sacrificing many Christian values and creating false utopias sustained by force. The conference denounced security states, for supporting dictatorships that abuse police power to deprive human beings of their rights. The theology of liberation was formulated after 1960 by theologians and social scientists through reflection on Latin American social and political reality and attempts to transform its oppressive structures. The best-known Catholic exponents include Gustavo Gutierrez (Peru), Juan Luis Segundo (Uruguay), Segundo Galilea (Chile), José Miranda (Mexico), Hugo Assman and Leonardo Boff (Brazil), Jon Sobrino (El Salvador), and Enrique Dussel (Argentina). They affirm the necessity of moving toward a social system characterized by priority for the poor, use of the social sciences in the analysis of reality, recognition of the ideological base from which every person develops religious understanding and importance given to praxis—active and obedient discipleship, supported by theory, with the eventual goal of the transformation of society. This theology was variously interpreted with Vatican in total disagreement and finally found legitimacy with Pope Francis. The fervor with which liberation theology embraced large majority of marginalized peoples and the evangelical zeal for social transformation marked a significant renovation in Catholicism.
Choice of a Political Scientist
The choice therefore of a Political Scientist as General is intelligible. How can any faith institution understand society and state without the social tools of analysis and theory? For too long faith has come to be understood as a set of devotions and practices, rites and rituals without fully understanding its transformative power. Latin America had begun the process four decades ago by looking at the base of theology as the poor and the impoverished and the Word to pull them out from those oppressive structures. With the election of Pope Francis, a man from the periphery, the periphery has become central. The church has realized the importance of working for social change as the key dimension of faith. The Society of Jesus had contributed to that process in no small measure though experienced opposition. In his own way the present General has contributed to that process. With grassroots experience he too had smelt the sheep as Director of ‘Centro Gumilla’, a social and action research centre and as Coordinator of non-formal education. He has been political in his mission like Pope Francis unafraid to take a stand. In an interview in 2014 he had described the authoritarian regime of Chavez’s successor Nicolas Maduro as a “popular tyranny”.
Re-inventing Mission
From the person Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ has been and his commitment to faith and justice there is bound to be changes in the mission of the Society of Jesus. While formation houses may be asked to re-invent their teaching of philosophy and theology with tools of social sciences to make faith alive and contextual the mission of the Society will surely be re-invented on the lines of the inspiration offered by Latin American Church. Fr. Pedro Arrupe SJ was a prophetic General who led the Society from 1965 to 1983. Fr. Arturo Sosa SJ is likely to fall back on that legacy with Pope Francis as a mentor to lead. The Society of Jesus always had a close bond with the person of the Pope. Now with two Latin Americans leading the Church, both Jesuits, in two different places linked together in faith they are likely to make a difference in re-inventing Christianity for our times. The only unique thing about Sosa is that he would be the first Jesuit general to sport a moustache without a beard.
( Dr. Ambrose Pinto SJ is Principal of St. Aloysius Degree College, Bangalore.)
(Published on 24th October 2016, Volume XXVIII, Issue 43)#
[i] The Jesuit Superior General is known as Black Pope for the simple black robes he wears in opposition to the white robe of the Pope. The other reason may have been that the Office of the Papacy and of the Superior General of the Jesuits once elected is till death though there are two cases of resignation of the recent Generals when they reached 80 and one Pope - Pope Benedict. That is where the comparison stops. "The black pope" is a nickname given to the Father General of the Society of Jesus. It is the people of Rome who had begun speaking jokingly of the Jesuit head as a second pope imagining that the Society exercises huge influence on the Vatican which is a figment of the imagination. The Jesuits are a religious Order like any other with our own characteristics. But we have always been at the service of the Church whenever the Papacy has called us for any specific mission or work. Obedience to the Pope has been the hallmark of the Society of Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment