SUPERIOR GENERAL MARKS anniversary

My deep consolation is knowing that our Jesuit mission here, now in its fifth century, continues.

Fr Arturo Sosa SJ’s whistlestop tour of the British Jesuit Province gave him a glimpse of the past, present and future of the Jesuits in Britain. John McManus describes a busy week for the Superior General.

We in Britain live in an old country, but there aren’t too many organisations on these islands that can point to four centuries of (sometimes suppressed, often violent) existence, and yet not only still be going strong, but actively innovating to confront new opportunities and challenges. A 400th anniversary of that nature deserves to be marked by a very special visitor – and the arrival in Britain of Fr Arturo Sosa SJ, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus, was intended to highlight some of the diverse ways in which contemporary Jesuits are still living their mission.

Fr Sosa’s first stop was in Liverpool, to acknowledge and pay tribute to a long-standing institution that has had the Jesuits at its heart. St Francis Xavier church in Everton is also celebrating an anniversary in 2023 – at 175 years old, it’s a much-younger sibling to the British Province, but like the Society, it has adapted while remaining focused on serving and enriching the community of which it is a part. Fr Sosa’s celebration of Mass marked the end of the Jesuits’ long association with the parish, with Fr Denis Blackledge SJ and Br Ken Vance SJ departing for pastures new, and the parish – which has been in the care of the Archdiocese of Liverpool for some years – will from now on be run by diocesan clergy.

Fr Sosa’s next stop was in north Wales, where he met the staff of St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre. In something of a theme for his trip, St Beuno’s is also marking 175 years, having started as a theology faculty, then becoming an infirmary, before taking on its latest mission in the 1970s. During Mass in the packed chapel, Fr Sosa spoke in his homily of the centre’s ‘core task’ being ‘the healing of the human heart, the overcoming of its sinful desire to expel God from the world’. He said that the vocation of St Beuno’s included connecting the first and fourth of the

Universal Apostolic Preferences –showing others the way to God, and working with others for the care of our common home.

The Jesuits have deep links with other parts of the world, and Manresa House in Birmingham, which houses the province’s novitiate, and which Fr Sosa visited next, serves not only Britain, but also Ireland, the Czech and Slovak Provinces, and the region of the Low Countries. Father General met with the men who are training for religious life before taking their first vows, then blessed the house. It has been recently rebuilt, partly to provide better accommodation for novices coming from Europe.

Pope Francis has made care for the environment one of the defining themes of his pontificate, and his second encyclical Laudato si’ has been the springboard for the Jesuits to look more closely at what they can do to care for our common home. Bearing the same name as the encyclical, the ecological research institute based at the Jesuits’ Campion Hall in Oxford, was the next stop for Fr Sosa. The institute’s researchers, drawn from a variety of intellectual backgrounds, use a transdisciplinary method to advance integral ecology, attending to both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. After meeting Laudato Si’ Research Institute staff, Fr Sosa presided over the eucharist with the Oxford Jesuits, which was attended by members of the wider Campion Hall community. He said that it struck him that, ‘Campion Hall is an unusual, perhaps unique institution in the Society: an authentic Jesuit presence within an ancient and elite university, which, while secular today, has profoundly Christian roots.’ Its role, he continued, was to show that the gospel is ‘not some disembodied ethos. It’s people living together in solidarity because God lives in total, unconditional solidarity with them.’

The final stage of Fr General’s journey brought him to the London Jesuit Centre in the heart of the capital, where he met members of the Jesuit community based in and around London, and the staff who work with them. Fr Sosa opened and blessed the new Cana Room, then made his way to the Heythrop Library, where he was shown a copy of the Jesuit journal SIC , with one of his own articles in it, dating from the 1970s. In the Jesuit Archives, he blessed the Nora & Fr Bernard Hall Room (named in honour of the British Provincial Superior from 1970-76 and his sister), and viewed items held in the collection, including a relic of Edmund Campion and Frederick Copleston’s top hat.

Following a private address to the London Jesuits, Fr Sosa celebrated Mass at Farm Street church, then met with Jesuits, staff and congregants, and other well-wishers at a packed reception.

‘I am sorry my visit to you is so short. I know London is a great city, two thousand years old, so full of history and significance. But my deep consolation is knowing that our Jesuit mission here, now in its fifth century, continues. Thank you, my brothers, friends, collaborators and benefactors, for all that you do and share together. May the joy, the peace and the life of the Risen Christ make you fruitful ad maiorem Dei gloriam.’ (Excerpt from Fr Sosa’s homily at Farm Street church on 14 April 2023).